Ideas Die Hard av Isaac Asimov .
But Oldbury still looked at the Moon. It was terribly close and now the surface was moving quickly. They were starting the swing in earnest and Oldbury’s scream was high-pitched. “Look! Lookathat!” His pointing finger was stiff with terror.
...
“You saw it. You saw the hidden side of the Moon as we went past and you saw there wasn’t any! Good Lord, just sticks, just big beams holding up six million square miles of canvas. I swear it, canvas!”
Men det var bara ett försök att se hur astronauterna skulle klara av stressens stress. De var inte menade att se den andra sidan av den falska månen, men experimentet gick fel:
“We learned a great deal, so the experiment was a success in its way. Now listen—the controls of the ship were designed to go wrong when they did in order to test your reaction to emergency conditions after several days of travel strain. The breakdown was timed for the simulated swing about the Moon, which we were going to switch about so that you could see it from a new angle on the return trip. You weren’t intended to see the other side and so we didn’t build the other side. Call it economy. This test alone cost fifty million dollars and it’s not easy to get appropriations.”
Nilsson added bitterly, “Except that the shut-off switch on the ’scope didn’t shut off in time. A valve caught. You saw the unfinished back of the Moon and we had to stop the ship to prevent—”
Eller var det ...
“Our unmanned rockets, three of them—the information devices on each stopped transmitting just before the boomerang swing and not one returned. Sometimes I just wonder—” “Shut up" said Nilsson fiercely.
Som en kommentar påpekar historien inte har publicerats i Amazing Stories , eller åtminstone inte enligt IFSDB . Den första publikationen var i galaxen 1957.