THE ALBINO SCORPION

No one knew of Wheeler DeWitt’s double life. To the people of Settlement XJ-400—and indeed to the thousands more back on Earth who knew him by either acquaintance or reputation—he was nothing less than the most renowned lunar geologist alive. True, he had his eccentricities—but weren’t all supremely gifted scientists famously quirky? Everyone agreed that, while the death by suicide of his wife the previous year had delivered a terrible shock, it seemed, ultimately, not to have diminished DeWitt’s prodigious élan vital. Privately, however, DeWitt knew this tragedy to have been the catalyst for the ever-widening chasm in his mind.

One night, about a month after the funeral, he’d been lying awake in his quarters, gazing saucer-eyed at the ceiling. When it became clear that sleep would not be approaching soon, he turned in his bunk, waved a palm across the bedside monitor, and, by touching in a sequence of numbers, retracted the Starscreen above his head. Silently, the ceiling opened, its multiple panels folding into each other like a fan, revealing a clear dome through which he saw into the bottomless well of space. Festooned with stars and, on this night, hung with the dappled blue globe of Earth, the view never failed to soothe him. He eased back onto his pillow, tucked both hands behind his head, and stared.

He thought, of course, of his wife—a beautiful, vivacious woman who, left too long alone on Earth while DeWitt worked, had fallen into the arms of an artist named Batts and then, once the affair was discovered, had flung herself—with characteristic melodrama—from a very high bridge. Aside from his profound grief, DeWitt struggled around the edges with darker impulses. He knew his feelings to be childish but couldn’t quite shake a lingering sense of shame, of wounded pride. The worst of it was that this fellow, Batts, fancied himself a man with Big Ideas. DeWitt, naturally, found this absurd and, with a shudder, sometimes tried to imagine the contents of Batts’ deluded mind, aswirl with fuzzy, rainbow-colored notions sprinkled with fairy dust. Once, with reluctance crossed with grudging curiosity, DeWitt had looked into the matter, unearthing a few clips of Batts holding forth in public. Evidently, the man believed that his art—ungainly piles of junk welded together on scaffolds—could, when properly arranged, inspire grand insights into the mysteries of the universe. Tragically, this was just the sort of nonsense to which his wife had never developed an immunity. DeWitt swooned with nausea at such brazen idiocy.

And yet—on that very night, without remotely understanding his own motives, DeWitt had begun digging the tunnel. First he’d unbolted his bunk from the platform, dragged it to one side, then got down on hands and knees to search for a seam in the floor. By the time he’d pried back the third metal plate, he’d grown resigned to his own burgeoning madness, chided himself for it—but continued to claw. A fever swept through his blood, a rage and bitterness alien to him that drove him to search for something—he didn’t know what—in a place he’d never before given a passing thought. That son of a bitch Batts had gotten into his head, that was the trouble. Now here he was, a famous scientist, fuming with adolescent jealousy and compelled by this unsought rivalry with a man he detested to burrow like a mole beneath his own bed. If only his colleagues at the Geological Society could see him now!

But of course he told no one.

Since that night, he’d been at it for eight full months. The tunnel now descended several hundred feet into the lunar surface, and it had become necessary to rig up a ladder, work lights, and a ventilation system. Lately he’d noticed that, when he’d finished digging for the night and returned to his bunk for a few brief hours of sleep, the sensation of lying atop an abyss produced spells of vertigo and troubling, chaotic dreams. Worse, he now thought he heard strange rumblings—whistles, moans—rising from the pit.

Then one night his rock hammer dislodged a chunk of stone unlike any he’d seen before—amber-tinted, translucent, streaked with reddish veins. DeWitt’s immediate realization that such a specimen had no business being on the moon set his nerves ablaze. The momentousness of the discovery struck him with such force that his already fragile psyche wobbled precariously, lurched, then toppled, unleashing a flood of egotistical fantasies that embarrassed him even as they overwhelmed his senses. He saw himself feted at the Geological Society’s Annual Gala, each of his colleagues hoisting a fluted champagne glass; hailed by future generations as an immortal genius, the Discoverer of the Lunar Bloodstone; drenched with applause by a tuxedoed audience in Stockholm . . . in short, he was assailed by every puerile daydream he’d long since forgotten existed except in the minds of hopeless mediocrities. Once more he grew alarmed at his rapid deterioration.

He didn’t have time to brood long, however, because just then the end of the tunnel collapsed beneath his feet, and he found himself yanked downward, then lodged to his waist like a cork in the fresh opening. His legs flailed freely, and the oxygen he’d routed into the tunnel now whooshed past him, roaring. Suddenly breathing became intense labor. His consciousness dimmed, and his entire body grew rigid with extreme cold. But he succeeded in remaining alert enough to realize that he now dangled over what must be an enormous cavern, previously a vacuum, which he’d cracked open for the first time in its very long existence. Fear—black, blinding fear—swept through him. Then at last the wind subsided. DeWitt, trembling and aglow with pain, regained himself. With supreme effort he dragged his body up into the tunnel, then climbed raggedly back to the surface.

By the time he’d returned to his quarters and lay sprawled out, heaving, on the floor, he felt exactly like a little boy who’d just received the whipping of his life before being sent to bed without supper.

Many days passed until he entered the tunnel again. Meanwhile, he went about his usual business. His colleagues at the laboratory regarded him warily as he stalked about in haunted silence, speaking only when unavoidably necessary—and then in a clipped, gravely tone that betrayed the barely restrained fury churning within him. Once he sent a tray of samples crashing to the floor; on another occasion he set fire to a stack of notes on the Lacus Somniorum. In both cases his colleagues—who, after all, might more accurately be called his assistants—said nothing and dutifully cleaned up each mess while DeWitt himself, deeply mortified, found some urgent business to pursue in another wing of the complex.

Then at last he could avoid it no longer.

Because he knew it would be the last time, he descended the ladder with conscious care—his movements measured, senses heightened. The walls of the tunnel felt more constricting, and he gazed with hypnotic intensity at the rock sliding past in the glow of his headlamp. Each sparkling, powdered feature pressed itself into his awareness. A hollow roar filled his ears, growing louder with each downward step. He hadn’t noticed this sound before and wondered if he’d simply been preoccupied or if it issued from the cavern he’d opened and now approached with mounting apprehension. He halted on the ladder, gripped the rung just below his chin. Then, releasing one hand, he touched each piece of extra gear he carried for this final trip—the thick coil of rope slung over his shoulder, harness, bag of clips and anchors, camera, signal flares, oxygen mask and tank. He wondered, momentarily, if he would ever return to the surface—then pushed the thought aside and resumed his descent.

You will embark on a quest for the fount of cosmic wisdom.

The voice of Batts, like an evil imp, echoed in DeWitt’s mind. Reaching bottom, he flung down the coil of rope, arranged his tools on a narrow ledge, pressed his oxygen mask more snugly to his face, then knelt at the edge of the cave opening and, with his rock hammer, inserted anchors into the tunnel walls. When he’d finished rigging the anchors, he threaded one end of the rope through the eyeholes, secured it, then found the other end and tied it into a thick knot. He checked the knot against the rings on his harness; satisfied that it could not pass through, he fed the rope, hand over hand, into the opening. Eventually, the weight of the rope pulled it through of its own accord. DeWitt let go and watched as the coil unspooled itself faster and faster until at last the rope snapped taut and trembled, swaying.

Matter will reveal itself as the infinitely polymorphous language of spirit.

DeWitt straddled the entrance, clipped his harness to the rope, and pulled a glove onto each hand. He stood for a moment, gripping the rope both before and behind. His mask hissed rhythmically with his breathing. Then, legs stiff, he tilted backward until he stood nearly horizontal, dropped into a crouch, and lowered himself into the cave. As he’d suspected, he passed only briefly through a narrow canal before emerging into vast, open darkness. Here, hanging freely, he could once more stretch his limbs but could not see or feel the limits of the surrounding chamber. His headlamp cast a strong beam but receded indefinitely, dissolving to black. He considered shouting, hoping to gauge the room by sound—but grew so terrified at the prospect that he refrained. And so, wishing to keep hold on his perspective, he stretched out flat on his back, stared fixedly at the ceiling, and descended inch by inch as the circle of light on the rock expanded. Viewed from below, he might have resembled a spider, radiantly backlit, dangling from the pupil of a monstrous eye.

Silence will be filled with the animate breath of life.

When he’d dropped about 100 feet he halted, bracing the rope against his hip. His body spun slowly; the rope creaked. Nothing had changed except his distance from the ceiling, and he fought mightily against outright panic. His oxygen mask wheezed. At last he summoned the courage to turn and look behind him—straight down into endless darkness. Then he saw, just where the rope seemed to vanish, a faint glimmer. Heart pounding, he fumbled in his pack for a signal flare, pulled the cap off with his teeth, and struck it against the sole of his boot. The ignition startled him, the pop and sizzle—then the sudden red blooming of light. Sparks poured from his hand, filling the cave and revealing on the floor far below a sight so shocking, so impossible, that DeWitt felt his sanity snap. A gigantic white scorpion, as big as a Starship, stood in a dusty crater, its whiplike tail poised to strike, its blind eyes glinting. DeWitt shrieked—and, in so losing his composure, released the rope, sending him plummeting down its length. By the time he reached the end—stopped violently short by the knot, bouncing and swinging like a child’s toy—he’d lost consciousness.

Your heart, abashed, will tremble.

He came to a few seconds later. Dizzy, sick, still swaying to and fro, he gazed down at the scorpion—flickering now in the light of the dropped flare—and realized that the creature was not a living being but a carved statue. Helplessly, DeWitt marveled at the craftsmanship, the attention to detail. And as he hung there, bathed with relief and gratitude, he was seized by recognition—like a man at the end of his tether newly filled with the living cosmos.