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CHRIS ROJEK

Culturel
Studies
W 4^' !.€

S H O R T I N T R O D U C T I O N S
Cultural Studies
Polity Short Introduction series

Published

Nicholas Abercrombie, Sociology

Michael Bury, Health and Illness
R. W. Connell, Gender
Hartley Dean, Social Policy
Stephanie Lawson, International Relations

For more information go to www.polity.co.uk/shortintroductions

Cultural Studies

Chris Rojek

polity
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First published in 2 0 0 7 by Polity Press

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For George and Sue Ritzer, benign hosts of the ‘McDonald’s House’ in
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manifesting great and continuing warmth, kindness and good sense . . .
(Although watch those terms in the contract next time George!)
 Contents

Culture Counts 1
The local and the global 2
Media genre and cultural representation 4
The meaning of culture 5
The culture of 'friendly fire' 7

Doing Cultural Studies 10

Doing Cultural Studies 1: The case of Reality TV 12
Doing Cultural Studies 2: The internet 18
Doing Cultural Studies 3: The mobile phone 21
Multiple modernities 22

Culture is Structured Like aLanguage 24

The imaginary 25
The 3 D's 27

Zeroing in on Culture 29
The origins of Cultural Studies 30
Postwar Cultural Studies 33
Culture is ordinary 37

The Four 'M om ents' in CulturalStudies 39

National-Popular (1956-84) 40
V III CONTENTS

Textual-Representational (1958-95) 48
Globalization/Post-Essentialism (1 9 8 0 -) 55
Governmentality/Policy (1 9 8 5 -) 61
Cultural Studies at the crossroads 66

6 Situating Yourself in Culture 69

Location 70
Embodiment 76
Emplacement 85
Context 92
M odernity and postm odernity 97

7 Cultural Distortion 101

Cultural representation, ideology and hegemony 103
Ideology 104
Cultures are not monolithic 105
Mechanical reproduction and aesthetic culture 106
Imaginary illusion and symbolic fiction 108
Lara Croft/cyborg culture 110

8 Neat Capitalism 115

The emergence of neat capitalism 119
The meaning of neat capitalism 122
Generation X and Y 126
The Body Shop 127
Apple 129
Neat capitalism; the basics 131

9 Neat Publishing 135

Cultural Studies and the anti-establishment 138
The Urbana-Champaign conferences 141
Routledge 143

10 Conclusion: The 'Long March' of the Cultural

Imaginary 151
The market solution 153
 CONTENTS IX

The state solution 154

Another culture 157

Notes 162
References 163
A uthor Index 169
Subject Index 171
 Culture Counts

Every human culture produces general narratives, some based upon

common experience, others upon the selective experience of an elite or
ruling class, expressed as binding and sometimes sacred truths, designed
to achieve solidarity and a shared sense of the past. For every human
society consists of individuals and groups positioned in relations of
unequal access to scarce economic, political, social and cultural resources.
Because of this, those who acquire dominance have developed alliances
and traditions designed to legitimate rule and, upon this basis, have
participated in threading together a web of common rights, justice, truth,
ideals, myths and traditions to protect and advance their interests. Like
all groups they are unable to fully control the consequences of their
actions, even though they typically behave in public as if the opposite is
the case. Strategies and designs that have been planned to enhance their
position often have unintended consequences that return to haunt them
in the course of time.
Since dominant groups are in relations of privilege over other groups,
it follows that their position is directly and indirectly subject to challenge
and contest. Groups that challenge authority develop their own cultures
of resistance and opposition. These are modified through interplay with
dominant groups. Through this perpetual interchange and elaboration
culture grows.
The inevitable consequence of these cultural, social, economic and
political struggles is the assignment of credence to the necessarily partial
views of the powerful in respect of the shared past and the common
interest. Why? Sir John Harrington’s (1561-1612) oft-quoted bon mot
deserves repeating here:
2 CULTURE COUNTS

Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?

For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

In other words, the acquisition of cultural authority carries with it the

capacity to re-write history and redefine the nature of the present. But
cultural authority is seldom an open and shut case. Cultural interchange
produces unforeseen results and domination means that some groups are
disempowered and marginalized. However, domination and disempow-
erment are never absolute. Even the Muslim prisoners held by the Ameri­
cans at the Abu Ghraib camp, on what many expert international lawyers
regard to be dubious legal grounds, can protest and challenge authority.
One of the heartening lessons to be learned from doing Cultural Studies
is that dominant groups are not all-powerful. They are caught up in the
unintended, unanticipated consequences of intended cultural design like
everyone else. Of course, their capacity to influence these consequences
is typically greater than that of the average person or group. Nonetheless,
they are subject to limitations and constraints especially if their behav­
iour incites public censure or provokes condemnation.

The local and the global

In emphasizing the global reach of contemporary culture it is important

to not get carried away. Culture is always local as well as global.
National and global culture often rub against the conditions of life that
people experience, as it were, ‘on the ground’, in their own local spaces
and traditions. Resistance and opposition are the accessories of cultural
authority, for groups are always positioned differently in relation to
scarce resources and therefore develop various, contrasting traditions of
rights, justice and truth. For this reason they build many types of cultural
solidarity and conflicting ways of reading the past, and engage in fric­
tional ways of interpreting the world.
When it was made public that three of the suicide bombers who
attacked London in 2005 were British and the fourth was Anglo-
Jamaican, it triggered a fusillade of national and international debate.
Why would British Muslims want to murder and maim their own coun­
trymen? The answer, of course, is that the four men identified with a
form of radical Islam that made their nationality, where they lived, their
neighbours and their fellow workers, beside the point. The Arab satellite
broadcasting company A1 Jazeera TV aired a video ‘suicide note’ by the
alleged ringleader of the bombers, Mohammad Sadique Khan. Speaking
 CULTURE COUNTS 3

in a strong Yorkshire accent, the 30-year-old, former teaching assistant,

proactively justified the London bombs by referring to unparticularized
‘crimes against humanity’ perpetrated by Western governments in the
Arab region and the huge wealth of the West in comparison with the
relative poverty of the developing world. In attacking Londoners, Khan
and his fellow suicide bombers saw themselves as striking a blow against
Anglo-American imperialism in Iraq and Palestine. Their self-image was
of righteous religious warriors avenging the oppressed and marginalized
thousands of miles away in the Arabian subcontinent. Yet the constitu­
ency of Islamic people that supported the London suicide bombs is
dubious. Islamic leaders in Britain and other countries quoted from
passages in the Koran to condemn the bombers as criminals rather than
religious warriors.
The number of British Muslims who support the indiscriminate killing
of fellow civilians as a legitimate response to Anglo-American involve­
ment in the post-Saddam reconstruction of Iraq is infinitesimal. Why
then did Khan and his conspirators believe they were acting for either a
larger body of opinion or a greater good, which they hoped to render
manifest by dint of the explosives they triggered on three London under­
ground trains and a bus.^ What makes individuals and groups raised and
nurtured by a host national culture define themselves in diametric oppo­
sition to the values of that culture so that they are prepared to obliterate
themselves and others who have done no wrong against them and who
may, for all they know, share the outlook that they hold and aim to
promulgate?
Similar questions were raised earlier in the USA in the trials of the
Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and the
Unabomber, Ted Kacynski. McVeigh had served with the American
military in the Gulf War; Kacynski was a former assistant Professor of
Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. Both saw them­
selves as American patriots and rejected the US government for, in their
view, having hoodwinked and betrayed the people. They seized on the
American doctrines of individualism and freedom of conscience to justify
kilhng and injuring fellow citizens. In McVeigh’s case, the main motiva­
tion was state spin, and the repression of the right to free speech for
right-wing groups. Kacynski operated with a more complex set of moti­
vations set out in his notorious 35,000-word U nabom ber M anifesto
pubhshed in 1995 in the N ew York Times and the Washington Post.
Here, in measured and rather compelling tones that would have not
disgraced many legitimate, established critics of contemporary culture,
Kacynski set out a condemnation of industrial civilization that centres
4 CULTURE COUNTS

upon its role in destroying the environment, fine-tuning conformity,

spreading misinformation, expanding surveillance powers, producing
ubiquitous sex and violence on television and assigning too much auton­
omy to multinational corporations.

Media genre and cultural representation

Our knowledge of these figures and the events associated with them is
transmitted to us through the media. The media isn’t just an impartial
relayer of news and information. It is a complex multi-corporate/state
network that codes and packages data for public consumption. Different
media organizations such as the BBC, CNN, Fox News, A1 Jazeera TV,
ABC, CBS, The Guardian, the N ew York Times, L e M onde, the Toronto
G lobe & Mail, the L os Angeles Times, the L ondon Evening Standard,
the N ew York Post and The Australian have distinctive styles of report­
ing and addressing audiences. Media genre is not just a question of
presentational style, it also includes questions of relevance, judgements
about the national and international significance of items and the cultural
and political agenda that informs these processes of selection. These
reflect not only national characteristics but also distinctive cultural tradi­
tions of journalism and broadcasting. To this extent, the news, just like
the companies that package and code it for us, is branded.
Among the best rationales for doing Cultural Studies is that it shows
why the human world is very often not what it seems to be and offers a
disciplined way of exposing how communication and representation
serve the interests behind power and manipulation. The common rights,
traditions and truths at our disposal often turn out to be illusions disguis­
ing powerful social interests and complex political devices designed to
achieve comphance. By critically examining them, we discover an intri­
cately staged version of our pooled traditions of truth and justice, and
what frequently turns out to be a mythical version of our shared past.
The metaphor of staging suggests that there is someone or something
behind the deception who wilfully engages in the craft of concealment
and fabrication. To be sure, there can be no doubt that the powerful
engage in systematic distortion to disguise the full range of their might
and the inner nature of their social, political and economic interests. It
would be rash and perverse to discount the formidable nature of their
power. Yet if it is right to describe them as puppeteers, history has a
habit of tying them up in their own strings. The interplay of culture
creates unplanned outcomes that condition the options for intentional
action for all.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Invaders of
the Forbidden Moon
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Invaders of the Forbidden Moon

Author: Raymond Z. Gallun

Illustrator: Frank R. Paul

Release date: April 25, 2020 [eBook #61927]

Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVADERS OF

THE FORBIDDEN MOON ***
INVADERS OF THE
FORBIDDEN MOON
 By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

Annihilation was the lot of those who ventured

too close to the Forbidden Moon. Harwich knew
the suicidal odds when he blasted from Jupiter to
solve the mighty riddle of that cosmic death-trap.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Planet Stories Summer 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Calling the pilot of space ship X911!" Evan Harwich shouted into the
radio transmitter of his little Interplanetary Patrol Boat. "Good God!
Turn your crate back, you crazy fool! Don't you know you're headed
right into the danger zone of Jupiter's Forbidden Moon? You'll get
yourself burned to a crisp in another few seconds if you don't turn
back...."
Evan Harwich's growling voice was almost shrill at the end. His
police duties patrolling the vicinity of Io, innermost of Jupiter's larger
satellites, rarely developed moments as tense as this. Most other
pilots had brains enough to give the Forbidden Moon a wide berth.
And for excellent if mysterious reasons!
Yet the craft ahead, a sleek new job with the identification number
X911 painted on its conning tower, kept steadily on. Its slim hull,
which betrayed an experimental look, was pointed straight at the
threatening greyish disc of Io, the one world in the solar system
which no exploring ship of the void had ever reached—intact!
Almost everybody among the inhabited spheres knew about the
dangers of the desolate Forbidden Moon. Ever since the colonial
empire of Earth had been extended to the region of Jupiter and his
numerous satellites, Io had been a grim menace; sure destruction to
any rocket that approached within five thousand miles of its dreary,
almost airless surface.
Nobody seemed to know just why this was true; but some scientists
claimed that somehow there was an invisible layer or shell all around
Io; an immense blanket of strange energy or force that fused and
blasted the metal hulls of all ether craft that ran into its insidious
web.
Tensely and helplessly Evan Harwich watched, as the ship ahead
continued on its way toward what seemed sure catastrophe. No
danger in front of the recklessly piloted craft could be seen, of
course. Five thousand miles of clear, cold vacuum was all that was
visible between it and Io. But since this region held concealed in it
all the potential violence of a hair-triggered trap, ready to unleash a
flaming death that involved unknown physical laws and principles,
maybe it wasn't just plain vacuum after all!
With dogged persistence Harwich kept yelling futile warnings into his
radio. His shouts and curses were unheeded, and no answer was
given. He knew what was going to happen in another second. There
would be a burst of dazzling white fire all around the rocket of this
foolhardy pilot he had tried to save from suicide. Metal would drip
and sparkle in the absolute zero of space. In just another instant....
Harwich swung his patrol boat aside, not caring to end his own life.
But he kept watching the X911 from the side-ports of his cabin.
And now, something quite different from what he had expected was
taking place. Suddenly the apparently doomed ship was enveloped
in a bluish halo which seemed to emanate from a great helix or
spiral of metal that wrapped its hull!
Immediately afterward, as the X911 entered definitely into the zone
of destruction around Io, great white sparks lanced dazzlingly
through the blue halo. It was as though the latter was fighting back
those gigantic, unknown forces that had seemed to make the
Forbidden Moon forever inviolable. It was as though the halo was
keeping the X911, and whoever was flying it, safe!
Evan Harwich's slitted eyes widened a little in astonishment and
hope. "Dammit!" he grumbled happily. "That idiot's got some kind of
new invention that's protecting him! Maybe the Forbidden Moon is
going to be reached and explored after all!"
A second more that weird conflict of hidden forces continued.
Watching it was like watching a race, on which you have staked
everything you own. Visibly, that daredevil space ship seemed to
slow, as if resisted by a tangible medium. For an agonizing instant of
suspense, Harwich saw those wicked sparks brighten in the X911's
bluish aura. Then the latter dimmed, flickered, went out!
As if angry demons were waiting to pounce, destruction struck—
quicker than a lightning bolt.
If there had been any humor in the situation before, it was gone
now utterly! The patrol man's lips dropped apart in sheer awe. The
muscles of his massive, freckle-smeared forearms tightened futilely
as he longed to help the X911's doomed pilot. In the pit of his
stomach there was a sickish feeling.
Where that rocket that had dared the inscrutable enigma of the
Forbidden Moon had been, there was a sudden, terrific blaze of light.
The intolerable incandescence of it seemed to reach out to infinity
itself, illuminating even the blackness between the distant stars of
space. But it was all as silent as the bouncing of a bubble on velvet.
No explosion, however huge, can transmit sound in the emptiness of
the void.
The magnificent, horrible blast broke into a million gobs and sparks
of molten metal—from what had once been a space ship's hull.
Superheated gas from ignited rocket fuel shot out. Scattered far and
wide, the white-hot fragments of the wreck continued on their way,
following the original direction of the once bold X911 toward Io.
Their speed increased gradually, as the gravity of the Forbidden
Moon pulled them. The larger chunks, falling at meteoric speed,
would bury themselves deep in the cold Ionian deserts.
The secret of Io had claimed another victim, one who might have
been victorious. But Io's mystery was still unviolated. Evan Harwich
had seen other ships, disabled and unmaneuverable for some reason
beforehand, go to their ends like this; but he was still not used to
the spectacle, and to the unholy wonder it provoked in him.
Dazzled and almost blinded, he guided his patrol boat shakily away
from the Forbidden Moon. There was cold sweat in his thick, black
hair, under his leather helmet; and cold sweat too on his narrow,
bristly cheeks. His movements of the controls were a trifle vague
and fumbling with emotion, making his patrol boat waver a little in
its course.
For perhaps the millionth time Harwich wondered: "What makes Io
so dangerous? Dammit all, those scientists who claim that there is a
deadly shell of unseen energy completely enveloping the Forbidden
Moon, must be right! There isn't anything else that could explain the
continual destruction of all rocket craft that come within that five-
thousand-mile limit!"
Evan Harwich was ready to accept this much as fact. But beyond
this, there was still a vast, unguessable question mark.
Was this shell of energy a natural phenomenon; or was it something
planned, made, intended for a purpose? If the latter guess was
right, who could have created such a gigantic screen of force? What
kind of beings? What kind of science?
Io was an almost dead world, Harwich knew. Very cold. Very little
water and air. Astronomers had taken photographs of its terrain
through powerful telescopes, from the other moons of Jupiter. Very
little could be seen on those photographs but deserts and grey hills,
and curious formations which might be the magnificent ruins left by
an extinct race.
Evan Harwich was far from a weakling; but cold chills were playing
over his big body as he groped to understand the unknown.
His vision was clearing somewhat, after having been so dazzled by
the incandescent blast that had accompanied the destruction of the
X911 a moment ago.
In the feeble sunlight, so far out here in the void, Harwich saw a
second rocket, leaving the scene of the disaster along with himself.
Evidently someone else had witnessed that weird demonstration of
Io's destructive might, too!
Squinting through a pair of binoculars, Harwich read the obviously
ancient craft's number. Then he snapped on his radio again.
"Calling space ship RQ257!" he grated into the transmitter.
"Interplanetary Patrol just behind you. Pilot, please identify yourself!
Do you know who was aboard the experimental rocket X911, that
was just destroyed?"
A few seconds later he heard a dazed, grief-anguished voice
speaking in response: "Yes ... I ought to know. I came out to watch
our test of the Energy Barrage Penetrator, which we thought would
be successful. I am Paul Arnold. The man who was just killed was
John Arnold, my father."
John Arnold! Yes, Harwich had often seen photographs of this
daring, hawk-faced old student of the Forbidden Moon in the
scientific journals. He had been the greatest of them all! But there
wasn't much to do for him now but shrug ironically, and report the
nature of his death by radio to the Interplanetary Patrol Base on
Ganymede, largest of Jupiter's satellites.
"I'm sorry, Paul Arnold," the patrol man told his informant in sincere
sympathy.
"Thank you," the quavering voice of Paul Arnold returned. "And now,
if you don't mind, I've got to get back to Ganymede City. Dad's
gone, but I've got to carry on his work."

Harwich didn't meet Paul Arnold, the son of the dead scientist, face
to face for more than a month, Earthtime. But on patrol duty out
there in the lonely reaches of the void, with the stars and the roar of
his rocket motors for company, he saw a good deal of the leering,
greyish sphere of Io. It seemed to taunt him with its masked secrets,
hanging so near to the tremendously greater bulk of Jupiter. But the
Forbidden Moon told him nothing new at all. Through his binoculars
he saw the deserts and hills and those supposed ruins. Near the
equator was something that looked like a vast, pointed tower. But
Harwich had seen this before, often. Something moved near the
tower now and then, as on other occasions. But maybe this distant
movement was only the shifting of clouds of dust, blown by a thin,
frigid wind, in a tenuous atmosphere.
Then, back in Ganymede City, came that meeting with Paul Arnold.
It happened at the Spacemen's Haven. Evan Harwich, on furlough
now, was sipping Martian kasarki at the bar.
Presently a hand was laid on his arm. He turned to face a slight-built
youngster, who could not have been more than eightteen. But his
peculiar gold-flecked eyes were as distant and scared and bright as
if they had seen Hell itself.
"You're Harwich," said the boy. "I'm Arnold. They pointed you out to
me as the patrol pilot who reported my father's death. I wanted to
talk to you. I don't know just why, except that you were there too,
when Dad was killed. You saw what happened. And people have told
me that you were a square shooter, Harwich."
Somewhat startled, but glad to know the youth, and more than
willing to talk with him on the subject mentioned, Evan Harwich tried
to smile encouragingly. It wasn't too easy, considering his
weathered, space darkened features and threatening size; but he did
his best.
"Pleased to meet yuh, Arnold," he said rather clumsily, offering a big
hamlike hand. "I wanted to talk to you too. How about a drink and a
quiet corner, where the crowd here won't be stepping all over us?"
They retired to a table in a screened nook. "Now," said young
Arnold, "you've seen as much of the Forbidden Moon as anybody
alive, Harwich. You must know that the energy aura around her is
real and not a fable. You must know, too, that it couldn't be a
natural phenomenon, since nothing in nature acts like it does.
There's only one alternative possibility as to what could cause it!
Even though Io seems so deserted, somehow there are machines
there, functioning to maintain that shell of force! Right?"
Harwich nodded. Little glints of intense interest seemed to show in
his eyes. "I've believed that for a long time," he admitted. "But those
machines must be plenty wonderful to build up a barrage of invisible
energy, thousands of miles in extent! Our scientists couldn't even
begin to dream of doing anything like it! Even the principles
employed must be a million years ahead of our time!"
"Right again!" the boy responded. For a second he cast a guarded,
suspicious glance around the room, where Earthmen and leathery
Martians were talking and laughing and drinking.
"The evidence can't be disputed," Paul Arnold whispered at last. "It
might be that the people who invented those machines have been
extinct for ages. But the mechanisms they created are still operating.
There's superscience there on Io, Harwich! How much could we
benefit civilization, if we could somehow find out what the principles
of those machines are? How much damage might be done if those
principles happened to fall into the wrong hands, among men? War
and conquest—a whole solar system thrown into chaos—might
result!"
Evan Harwich wanted to laugh scornfully, wanted to call the kid a
dreamer of wild dreams; but the realization that young Arnold
probably told the truth, made his hide tingle and pucker instead.
"Maybe you're right, fella," he growled.
"Of course I am!" Arnold almost snapped. "My father believed it for
years, and his work must go on, even though the Forbidden Moon
scares me plenty. You saw yourself, Harwich, that his Energy Barrage
Penetrator was almost successful. I've been trying to build another,
with enough power to get through."
Harwich's lips curved, a nameless, wild thrill stirring in his blood. But
after all, even before he'd left a great consolidated farm in southern
Illinois nine years ago, to become a spaceman, he'd been an
adventurer at heart.
"Do you suppose you'll need any help?" he asked simply, realizing
that even as he spoke, death on a tomb-world might well be lurking
in the background.
The question sounded like impulse, but it wasn't. Harwich had lived
too long in the shadow of the Forbidden Moon's taunting enigma,
not to want to take a personal part in any effort to penetrate its grim
secrets. Besides, he had a month's furlough from patrol duty now.
The thought of possible adventures to come made his nerves tingle.
Paul Arnold's eyes widened. "I almost hoped you would want to join
me, Harwich," he stammered happily, seeming only to need the
moral support of an experienced spaceman, to bring him out of the
black mood he was in. "Shall we go to my laboratory?"

The Arnold lab and dwelling proved to be one of the oddest that
Evan Harwich had ever seen. It was just outside the great steel-
ribbed airdrome that confined a warm, breatheable atmosphere over
Ganymede City, the small mining metropolis of a dying world.
The Arnold lab was a group of subterranean rooms, beneath the
desert. They were reached by a private tunnel from the City, and
were hermetically sealed against leakage of air to the cold semi-
vacuum of the Ganymedean atmosphere above.
Cellar rooms, vaults, not exactly modern but restored from some
ancient ruin; for Ganymede had had its extinct clans of quasihuman
people too, ages ago. A weird place, this was, a place of poverty,
perhaps, since all of the Arnold resources must have gone into
experimentation; but a homey sort of place, too, with its scatterings
of books and quaint art objects and pictures.
"This is the Energy Barrage Penetrator, Harwich," Paul Arnold was
saying in husky tones, as the two men bent over a copper helix or
spiral, attached to a maze of wires, tubes, and power-packs. "I
rebuilt it here on this test-block from Dad's plans; with certain
rearrangements, of course. But we need a new Gyon condenser, if
we want to raise the Penetrator's strength enough to make our
venture successful."
Evan Harwich nodded beneath the single illuminator bulb that
glowed here, its rays glinting from the battered, patched hull of the
space ship, RQ257, that stood in the center of the great room, under
the airtight exit doors provided for it in the ceiling.
"So I see," Harwich commented with subdued eagerness. "Well,
that's not so bad. I can buy a new Gyon condenser from one of the
supply shops in town. I'm no scientist, fella, but they give us a pretty
complete scientific training in the patrol service. Enough so that I
can see that the Penetrator is going to do the trick, this time, with
your improvements. And I don't think it will take very long to get
things ready for a real trip to the Forbidden Moon."
The patrol man had hardly finished speaking, when a door,
somewhere, groaned on its hinges. In the dusty silence there were
footsteps, coming nearer through the series of rooms.
"Well, have we got company?" a voice boomed heavily after a
moment.
Evan Harwich turned about slowly. Standing in the arched entrance
of the laboratory chamber, beneath the ancient, grinning gargoyle of
carven granite that formed the keystone of the arch, were two
people. They must have just come in from town.
One was a man, as tall as Harwich himself, but much broader. He
looked jovial, overfed, and just faintly sly. Harwich knew him a little.
He kept a small printer's establishment in Ganymede City, repaired
delicate instruments, and made loans on the side.
"Hello, Harwich!" the big man greeted loudly. "You look surprised to
see me here! Well, I'm just as up in the air as you are, to find you
around. How come? You see I've been financing Paul Arnold's
researches since old John was killed. Has Paulie talked you into
some part in the great miracle hunt on Io, too?"
"Hello yourself, Bayley," the patrol man returned in not too friendly a
tone. "Yes, I've joined up."
Harwich was a little more than surprised to see the fat printer here.
He didn't like the setup at all. Not that he had anything definite
against George Bayley. The latter had always seemed good-natured
and honest, except for some elusive trace of insincerity in his
manner, his voice, and his little squinted eyes.
Was this the kind of man for Paul Arnold to choose as a patron,
particularly when he was in pursuit of the incredibly advanced
science which must exist on Io? A science that might benefit the
human race immeasurably, or might result in wholesale destruction
and confusion, if it was wrongly and selfishly used?
Evan Harwich couldn't have answered yes or no to this question.

There was a painful pause in the conversation. Harwich found

himself looking at the girl, who had entered with the big printer, and
to whose arms the latter clung with a kind of bearish
possessiveness. She was small and dainty. Her blonde hair, combed
back tightly, fitted her head like a cap. She was wearing a plain but
tasteful black dress with a white collar.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Paul Arnold exclaimed after a moment. "Clara, this is
Evan Harwich of the Patrol. Evan, this is my sister. I didn't tell you
that I had a sister, did I?"
The girl only nodded slightly, and smiled a warm, friendly little smile.
But why did the big patrol pilot find her more attractive than any
other girl he had ever seen? Perhaps mostly it was those wistful eyes
of hers, not gold flecked like her brother's, but clouded amber. They
were mild and troubled and knowing. Maybe Clara Arnold's life, as
the daughter of a martyred scientist, had made them like that.
Harwich knew that he might conquer not only the Forbidden Moon,
but the stars themselves, and still remember those eyes.
"Now we all know each other," Bayley boomed. "We're one big
happy family—or are we?" He looked at Harwich significantly, a
definite scowl now crinkling his heavy brows. "Harwich," he added,
"we appreciate your company a lot. Only we are engaged in some
pretty serious business here, and it doesn't allow us to take in
outsiders."
For reasons of his own, Bayley was trying to get rid of the big patrol
pilot. But Harwich was inclined to be very stubborn, naturally, and
faint, pleading looks from both Clara and Paul Arnold, made him
doubly so, just at present.
Harwich had the aspect of a very dangerous adversary in a physical
encounter; his weathered features were far from beautiful, and at
certain times he had a way of grinning that made him look like a
good-natured devil with a hot pitchfork hid behind his back. He
turned on that grin, now.
"What's in that package sticking out of your coat-pocket, George?"
he asked the fat printer breezily. "It's about the right size and shape
to be the new Gyon condenser we need. I was going to buy one
myself; but seeing that you've already done so, we might as well go
to work installing it in the Penetrator apparatus."
"Well, all right, Harwich," Bayley growled with some slight show of
timidity. "As long as you're Paul's friend, I suppose you can stick
around."
"Thanks a lot, George," Harwich chuckled, as the printer set the
package containing the precious Gyon condenser on a work table.
The patrol pilot was almost sure he heard faint sighs of relief from
the two Arnolds, as Bayley backed down. Had they come to mistrust
him too, since he had been financing them? Did they feel more at
ease because he, Evan Harwich, whom Bayley could never bulldoze,
was their partner now too?
The spaceman wondered, and he couldn't help wondering something
else. On Clara Arnold's left hand, there was a diamond gleaming. An
engagement ring. Bayley's? The way the latter had clung to the girl's
arm, it couldn't very well be anybody else's. Could Clara, quiet and
beautiful, ever love the boisterous, paunchy printer?
The Arnolds were a strange family, anyway. The son was ready to
sacrifice his life in an effort to reach the Forbidden Moon, where his
father's ashes lay entombed. The daughter? Might she not be of the
same fanatical breed? Might she not be willing to marry Bayley, so
that he would supply funds for their experiments?
For a moment, Evan Harwich felt a sharp, hurt ache, deep in his
heart. But he fought it down. All this was none of his business. And
from a heavy-glazed window slit in the ceiling of the laboratory
room, a shaft of soft light from ugly Io, the Forbidden Moon, was
stabbing down, appealing to his own adventurous nature.
Paul had slipped on a pair of lab coveralls. He tossed another pair to
the patrol pilot. "Come on! Let's get started, Evan," he urged
pleasantly. "We've got a big job in front of us, and remember you
said we'd get through with it before long!"

True to Harwich's predictions, the rearrangement of the Energy

Barrage Penetrator for far greater power than the original had
possessed, did not take really a lot of time.
Within forty hours after the patrol pilot's arrival at the lab, the task
of installing the Arnold apparatus in the old space ship, RQ257, was
complete. The tests of the Penetrator had been made, and judged
as successful as anyone could have hoped for.
The space ship stood ready there in the laboratory room, a slender,
copper helix wrapped around its hull.
"All set, eh?" George Bayley boomed jovially. "Got your emergency
supply-packs loaded aboard, too, eh? But you won't need them,
boys," he added seriously. "You've got everything in your favor. And
in five hours you'll be back here with Clara and me, at the lab with a
dandy story to tell."
Bayley seemed honest and sincere, now. Evan Harwich almost felt
sheepish about the matter. Maybe he'd misjudged the big, bearish
printer. Anyway, he watched his every move, during the assembly
and installation of the Penetrator.
Paul Arnold was whistling a little tune of confidence and exultation.
Harwich's pulses beat happily, his thoughts on the enigma of the
Forbidden Moon, that now must yield to the new Energy Barrage
Penetrator. Superscience there on Io! Unutterable wonders! Who
could guess beforehand what the Forbidden Moon's vast screen of
force was meant to bar from intrusion? But maybe they would soon
know!
Only Clara Arnold showed worry. There was a slight shadow in her
amber eyes, when she took Harwich's hand.
"I suppose this is only a preliminary test flight to Io and back," she
said. "Not much dangerous exploration. But please be careful," she
pleaded. "Please be careful, Evan."
The spaceman muttered a word of thanks. Evan. His first name. To
have Clara Arnold use it like that might have given a new meaning to
life. His heart was suddenly pounding very hard, before he
remembered that diamond on her left hand. She was promised to
George Bayley.
The girl and the printer retreated from the laboratory chamber,
waving a farewell. The space ship was sealed. The great exit doors
in the ceiling of the lab opened wide, and the air rushed out.
In another moment the RQ257 was shooting skyward. In the night,
among the welter of stars, huge Jupiter and his many satellites
shone down on the Ganymedean deserts. The nose of the ship
swung unerringly toward Io.
The RQ257, wrapped in its protecting halo of blue fire from the
Penetrator, struck the Forbidden Moon's tremendous, invisible
envelope of energy, squarely. There was a snarling sound in the
ship's interior. White sparks lanced through cold space beyond the
windows of the cabin, as two opposed forces fought each other. But
the RQ257 bored on steadily.
"We're going to make it, Paul!" Harwich shouted through the
reeking, dinning cabin.
"Of course we are!" young Arnold yelled back at him. "How could we
fail!"
The two men were on the brink of success.
Then there was an abrupt, strident, angry, snap from the vitals of
the Penetrator apparatus. Everything seemed to happen at once.
The protecting blue aura outside the ship waxed and waned
perilously. And whenever it waned, there was a grinding, crumpling
sound, as of steel plating being crushed like so much paper in a
giant's grip. Heat, and the cindery pungence of scorched metal, filled
the cabin.
Paul Arnold and Evan Harwich were frozen rigid with stunning,
agonized paralysis, as strange energy snapped into their bodies. In
the jolting, erratic motion of the wounded space ship, the two men
were hurled from their feet like a pair of stiff wooden dolls.
Rolling and tumbling, his vision half blinded, Harwich saw the metal
walls of the cabin buckle and redden with heat, as the craft
floundered in that region of mysterious force and energy that
heretofore had destroyed every ship that had attempted to reach Io.
There was another growl from the protecting apparatus. In a flash of
electricity, the side of the bakelite case that housed the Gyon
condenser exploded outward. At once the staggering Penetrator quit
completely. Its last shred of protecting force was gone.
But that momentary hell had ended, too, with almost dazing
suddenness. The grinding, snapping sounds had ceased. And there
was only the heat and the stench of burnt metal, and the weightless
sensation of free fall. That and the mocking stars.
Paul Arnold, panting, his face darkened and beaded with
perspiration, clutched a bakelite handrail in one corner.
"We got through Io's energy barrage!" he shouted wildly. "We did
that much, at least; and for a moment, when our Penetrator went
wrong, I didn't think our luck would be even that good."
Evan Harwich leered back at the youth, from near the now useless
apparatus that John Arnold had invented. "Yes, we got through," he
grunted hoarsely. "The energy shell must be only a couple of
thousand miles thick, with free space underneath, between it and Io
itself. The Gyon condenser kept working raggedly just long enough
to get us out of the danger zone, without being completely blown
apart!"
Harwich didn't have to test the controls of the ship to know that they
were useless, now. The rockets were silent too. The RQ257 was
falling free toward the Forbidden Moon, still a couple of thousand
miles beneath.
"But dammit, Evan!" young Arnold growled. "The Gyon condenser
shouldn't have quit on us at all! Those things are tested for heavy
loads of power!"
The patrol pilot was well aware of that. Clinging to the base of the
Penetrator, he was close enough to see detail. The lights in the cabin
had gone out, but the ugly effulgence of Io was streaming through
the windows.
Projecting from the shattered bakelite box of the Gyon condenser,
were two slender, bent wires that should have been joined together.
It had been one wire once, but it had snapped in the middle.
The ends were faintly scorched and blued; but there was something
else, too. They were bevelled off curiously, as if they had been
notched.
"Cut with a file!" Harwich fairly snarled. "The wire was cut with a
file. Then the insulation was rewrapped carefully so that all the
evidence was hidden!"
The cause of the accident was plain. The wire had been able to carry
the load of power easily enough during the tests; but under the
additional load of fighting the Ionian hell-zone, it had burned
through and snapped!
"Bayley!" Paul Arnold whispered in the ominous stillness that now
pervaded the plummeting derelict of the RQ257. "He brought the
condenser, you remember! Evan, I know you were careful to watch
everything he did during the assembly and tests in the lab itself. He
must have had the Gyon condenser at his apartment before he
brought it to us. He must have doctored it there! He was planning
even then to get rid of me! And when he found you around, he
decided that he wouldn't weep if he got rid of you too!"
"But why?" Harwich growled in momentary confusion. "Why should
Bayley want to get rid of you?"

It was almost a silly question, as Harwich realized at once; but now

Paul was answering it.
"It's simple," said the youth. "Bayley financed me after Dad was
killed—yes. He watched my experiments and tests and studied my
apparatus. He has a pretty keen mind. With me out of the way, no
one but himself will know just how the Penetrator works! He can fix
up another ship and come to Io himself without any competition!
Anything he learns or discovers on the Forbidden Moon will be his
alone! Or so he thinks, anyway."
It was too clear now! Evan Harwich knew that he and the boy were
tumbling helplessly into the maw of hell now. In a useless, derelict
ship they were falling toward the Forbidden Moon! They were
already within the gates of unholy mystery! Death seemed very
close. Yet the cold anger that hissed in the patrol pilot's brain, made
him determined to live, somehow, for revenge!
"We'll be smashed if we stay in the ship, Paul," he said fiercely. "So
we've got to jump for it with our safety equipment."
Quickly and more smoothly than did the youth, for he was well-
trained, Harwich got into his space armor. Next he donned two
massive packs, one on his chest and one on his back.
The exit door of the cabin was jammed, but with his pistol the patrol
pilot fired an explosive bullet into its hinges.
A second afterward, Arnold and Harwich crept through the rent,
while escaping air puffed out around them. They leaped into the
emptiness almost together. With the heat-warped wreck of the
gallant old RQ257 falling beside them, they continued their
plummeting descent. There were still almost a thousand miles to go,
for the distance between Io itself, and the gigantic energy envelope
that surrounded it, was perhaps three thousand miles.
Down and down, with only regulation spacemen's emergency
equipment to rely on to avert being crushed on those greyish hills
and deserts, rushing nearer and nearer. Even a thousand miles did
not take many moments at that terrific speed.
The Forbidden Moon was like a sullen, silent nether world, with an
atmosphere so rare that an unprotected human being would gasp
and die in it in a few minutes! Even a man in a space suit could not
hope to survive that desolation for long! Io seemed like a Pit now to
Evan Harwich, an Abyss of Hell from which there was no escape! A
place where no Earth being was meant to venture!
This moment was too grim to think of thrills. Helplessness removed
that intriguing glamor utterly. And there was only savage
determination left. That and smoldering hate of the man who had
caused misfortune!
Presently, through the thin metal of his oxygen helmet, Harwich
heard a soft, hissing, whistling sound. Gradually it grew stronger.
The patrol pilot knew what it was, of course. He had entered the
intensely thin upper atmosphere of Io, and the hissing was made by
his own space armored body passing through those tenuous gases
at fearful velocity.
The sound served as a signal for action. Again, though the situation
was new to him, Harwich's training made his responses accurate.
With a gauntletted hand, he groped for the metal ring on the pack
that bulged from his chest. It was ancient history when he jerked
that ring, but sometimes, in emergency landings like this, on worlds
that had a blanket of air, however slight, it was still useful. In
another second the patrol pilot was dangling beneath a gigantic
mushroom of metal fabric. He felt the firm tug of the shrouds.
Deceleration.
He wondered vaguely why the fragile parachute did not tear apart in
the terrific speed of his fall. But it was the utter thinness of the air,
of course, here in the upper layer. Its resistance was so very slight.
So there was time for velocity to be checked gradually, as the air
grew denser, and its retarding effect greater with lowered altitude.
Paul Arnold had opened his chute too. Its vast top, a hundred feet in
diameter, gleamed dully in the faint sunshine.
In a great plume of dust far below, the derelict space ship crashed.
Fire flew as the force of the impact generated heat. But the
wreckage was out of sight, and there was only a pit smoldering on a
bleak, dusty hillside. The RQ257 was buried deep.

Harwich and Paul Arnold landed several miles away from the grave
of the ruined ship; for they had drifted with the thin, dry, frigid wind.
Their booted feet spanged painfully against the sand and broken
rock, and they crumpled to their knees; for even in the feeble gravity
of Io the impact had been heavy.
Harwich snapped on his helmet radio-phone. Young Arnold's voice
was already audible in it, faint and thready and sarcastic.
"Well, here we are, Evan," he was saying. "The first Earthmen to set
foot alive on the Enchanted World! I guess I got part of what I
wanted anyway, didn't I? But with what equipment we've got to
keep alive with, we might just as well be buried with the RQ257!
Funny I'm not scared. I guess I don't realize...."
His bitterly humorous tone faded away in vague awe.
Still lying prone the two men, looked around them, at the hellish,
utterly desolate scene. The hills brooded there under the blue-black
sky and tenuous, heatless sunshine. A rock loomed up from a heap
of sand. It was a weathered monolith with weird carvings on it,
resembling closely those left by the extinct peoples of Ganymede,
that other, now colonized moon of Jupiter. A curious pulpy shrub,
ugly and weird, grew beside the monolith. A scanty breath of breeze
stirred up a little ripple of dust.
That and the stillness. The stillness of a tomb. Harwich could hear
the muted rustle of the pulses in his head. Everything here seemed
to emphasize the plain facts. The Forbidden Moon was a trap to
them now. A pit from which they could expect no rescue. An abyss
that was worse than the worst dungeon—worse than being literally
buried alive!
It was like the end of things. Was this the kind of slow, creeping,
maddening death that George Bayley, the treacherous printer, had
planned for them?
Again fury steadied Evan Harwich's determination. Grimly he
struggled to steady his nerves.
"Listen, Paul," he said quietly into his phones. "We mustn't ever let
ourselves think we're licked! That's sure poison! The stuff we've got
in our emergency packs will enable us to keep living for a while
anyhow. We know Bayley'll come to Io sometime, with a ship fitted
out with a new Penetrator. We know he'll be looking for the secret of
the force aura of the Forbidden Moon, and whatever else there is to
find. Maybe we can get ahead of him yet, if we keep on the move.
Which way do you suppose would be best to go?"
Harwich asked this question because Paul Arnold, in his more
academic study of Io, should know more about its terrain than he.
"You know the Tower?" Paul Arnold questioned. "The queer pinnacle,
or ruin, or building, near the equator, on what is known as the
Western Hemisphere? You must have seen it often when you were
on patrol."
Harwich nodded. He remembered very well. Only a hundred hours
ago, still on duty as a patrol pilot, he'd seen that pointed mystery
from the void, vague dusty movement around its base.
"It was my Dad's guess that whatever miracles are to be discovered
on Io, they will probably be located around the Tower," Paul Arnold
answered. "But I was careful to notice our position when we landed.
We're far north of the Tower now—a good fifteen hundred miles. A
nice, long walk—especially when the normal air of the Forbidden
Moon is too thin to be breatheable."
"Stop that pessimist stuff, and let's get started!" Harwich snapped.
"We'll have to live very primitively, of course, but who knows what
will turn up?"
They discarded their parachutes and started out, plodding
southward, carrying their heavy packs. As if to save their energy,
they did not speak much.
The hills rolled past, under their plodding feet. More fragmentary
ruins appeared, and were left behind. Their boots sank into soft
dust, as they marched on and on. At first their muscles were fresh,
but tiredness came at last. And the miles which lay ahead were all
but undiminished.
The tiny sun sank into the west and the cold increased. Night was
coming.
"We'd better camp," young Arnold suggested wearily.
So they opened their packs, and took out the carefully folded
sections of airtight fabric that composed their tent. It was part of the
usual equipment kept for emergency purposes by those in danger of
being stranded on dead or almost dead worlds. The tent could be
hermetically sealed. Harwich and Arnold set it up carefully and crept
inside. Air was freed from their oxygen flask, and the queer shelter
ballooned out like a bubble.
They could remove their space suits now, and breathe, here in the
tent. They ate sparingly from their concentrated rations. Meanwhile
a little pump and separator unit, driven by a tiny atomic motor, was
busy compressing the thin Ionian air, separating out the excess of
carbon-dioxide and nitrogen it contained, and forcing the oxygen
into the depleted air flasks.
Once in the darkness Paul and Evan were awakened by a strange
sound, eerie in that dead quiet, and very faint because the scant
Ionian atmosphere could not conduct it well. But when they crept to
the flexoglass window of the tent, they saw nothing unusual.
"I guess we're getting jumpy," Paul whispered nervously, his breath
steaming in the cold, frosty air that filled the shelter.
"It looks that way," Evan Harwich returned reassuringly.
But after the boy was asleep again, he crept back to the frosted
window to watch. He knew that there had to be something mighty
on Io. The shell of force that surrounded the evil moon couldn't exist
all alone. There had to be more. Something that lay back of it, went
with it. Something that could easily be very dangerous.
Jupiter, so near to Io, was a gigantic threatening mass in the
heavens. But its light was deceptive. There were so many dense
shadows.
Did he see some of the stars near the horizon wink out suddenly,
and then appear again, as though something big and nameless and
sinister had momentarily blocked their light and then passed on? He
could not be sure, and nothing further happened. To save his
companion unnecessary concern, when nothing could be done about
the threatening danger anyway, he decided to keep the incident to
himself.

Long before the dawn they were once more on the march. How
many hours was the Ionian day? Something over forty. It didn't
matter much.
When the daylight finally came, they had slept again, this time in
their space suits, without bothering to set up the tent. Rising to his
feet, Paul Arnold pointed suddenly.
"Look! An ancient road!" he shouted.
It was true. The highway ran there between the hills. A stone
ribbon, covered here and there with drifted sand, which showed that
there was no traffic of any sort now. The ruins along it looked a little
less battered than those which the two men had previously seen,
and there were vast lumps of corroded metal, too. Machinery in a
former age.
"The road goes our way," Harwich commented. "We'll follow it."
Hours later, Paul Arnold offered an opinion. "Part of the mystery of
Io is clearing up, Evan," he said. "The ruins around here. They're
almost identical in architecture to the ruins of Ganymede and the
other Jovian satellites. The evidence looks plain. There must have
been a single great civilization once, extending over all the moons of
Jupiter."
Harwich, thinking of, and hating George Bayley for his diabolical
treachery, was only half listening.
"Yes?" he questioned.
"Yes," the boy answered. "And look at those dry ditches, and the
big, rusty pumps! The valley here must have been rich, irrigated
farmland, once!"
They were going across a huge bridge, now, made of porcelain
blocks. It was a magnificent structure, magnificently designed
according to intricate principles of engineering.
"What I can't understand is why all this country became deserted,"
Paul offered. "You'd think that people who could build things like this
would never die out! They could conquer any difficulty that might
come up, it would almost seem. Even if their world got old and worn
out. After all, even Earthmen can make almost dead worlds
artificially habitable again with airdromes, and with imported
atmosphere and water."
This was another mystery. But it touched Evan Harwich's thoughts
only faintly. Nor did he care very much when later Paul pointed out
to him rich deposits of ore—outcroppings along the road. He'd seen
them himself, and the tunnel mouths, too, of ancient mine workings.
There were many fortunes to be won here, in costly metals, just as
on the other Jovian satellites. But how could this be important, now,
with death dogging their tracks, and so many other things more
important, to be concerned with?
Evan Harwich reserved his determination for what he knew was
coming. The slow wearing down of stamina. Water he and Paul had
a little of. And more could be reclaimed from the thin, dry
atmosphere. It collected in the bottoms of oxygen bottles, when
they were pumped full, condensed by compression. A few precious
drops. You could drink it out after each bottle was emptied of air.
Just about enough water to sustain life.
In the matter of food, you had to ration yourself so stringently that
you caught yourself looking with longing eyes at the few, weird,
bulbous shrubs and the scattered lichens, which were the only
vegetation on this dying world. Only you knew that these arid
growths would never be good to eat.
Those long Ionian days passed. One after another. Five, ten, fifteen.
Harwich knew he was losing strength slowly. The inevitable was
catching up with him. But those hard years in the Interplanetary
Patrol Service, and the rigid physical discipline, had made him as
tough as steel wire.
With the boy, Paul Arnold, it was not the same. He was very young,
and not too robust. And he was slipping fast.
"What's the matter with me, Evan?" he would grumble. "All this
desert isn't real, is it? We're not on the Forbidden Moon, are we? I'm
dreaming."
"You're just tired out, that's all, fella," Harwich would answer in a
tone that he would try to make reassuring. He would put an arm
around the kid's shoulders, to support his faltering steps.
Big brother stuff.... Paul had plenty of pluck, all right, but there
wasn't much else left in him. He was wearing out, mile by mile,
staggering under his heavy pack.

Every resource was reaching its limit, now. Food supplies had
dwindled away to nothing, at last. The little atomic motor that
worked the air compressor and separator unit, was breaking down.
It could hardly pump enough oxygen into the air flasks any more.
But there was nothing to do but keep on the march, anyway, in spite
of handicaps. Evan Harwich felt as though he was going slowly mad.
Brooding thoughts came into his mind constantly.
Clara Arnold. Where was she now? What had happened back there
on Ganymede? What had George Bayley done? When would he
come to Io, with the ship he would surely fit out with a new
Penetrator?
What was Clara thinking? What if she knew her brother was alive on
the Forbidden Moon, but slowly dying? What if Bayley told her that
maybe Paul was still alive, adding that he himself was the only
person that might be able to effect a rescue? What if he had finally
used this means, this possibility, to make Clara marry him? She
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