The Brotherhood was very old, the outgrowth of an ancient Eastern philosophical cult of non-resistance and peace. With six months more, the Brotherhood could win the peace, maybe forever. If the speech just made frightened the Americans enough, they wouldn't try anything. The only other powers that might start a war within six months were Russia, China, Yugoslavia. And they were too uncertain as to whether or not America had already reached the moon. Who controlled the Moon controlled Earth. They had been afraid for some time that perhaps America had already gotten to the moon. Mutual fear of retaliation had postponed the last war this long. The Brotherhood knew social-psychology. They figured this would work. Barlow felt himself backing away from the rocket. They were watching him, the rocket's eyes and ears. Taking his voice and image back to earth, back to voices and laughter and music and sound and warmth and women ... with a sob, he twisted away from the rocket, turned, fell to his thighs in thick pumice-dust, kept on struggling through lazy streaming dust ribbons and he didn't look back. He was watched; he mustn't look back at the rocket again. Meteors exploded soundlessly on the beds of lava and seas of dust, shooting up thick motionless sprays that seemed almost solid. Above him, like splintered steel, stretched the thousands of feet of crater wall. He reached the sharp wall of rock, managed to get around it and out of sight of the rocket. He fell. He lay there, his suit blending with the cold and airless landscape. He screamed. He clawed his way up, started back again, back toward the rocket. Hell with the Brotherhood. He was for Hal Barlow. Just for Hal Barlow. He'd tell the truth. It wouldn't be long then. They'd send other rockets up then. This was for Hal Barlow. The isolation pressed in, pressed him faster, throwing him crazily over the dust toward the rocket. Then they'd know the truth, send up other rockets, ... not this way, with no more sounds, voices, any moving thing. No way for a man to die.... It wasn't death; it was the way of dying. No one should die this way--so alone. Especially Barlow, who feared loneliness more than anything else. He fell. One foot slid into a crack filled with pumice dust fine as powder. He hooked the big steel hooks on the ends of his arms at the rock, and clung there, his helmet barely pushing up through the dust. He struggled for a while, desperately with his mind filling with visions of the rocket. He wanted to live now, make up for all the living he'd missed for so long. He looked around, still struggling. Light gravity, little weight, but he was so weak now, and still the rocket wasn't in sight. He crawled on his stomach, dragging the bulbous suit over the rock. He could get around the rock. He had to. Out of sight, but so near, was the warm human rocket.