They Also Serve

They also serve who only stand and wait. This is the chilling premise of Donald E. Westlake's 1960 short story: alien observers stationed on a moon base, watching Earth with growing unease. Captain Ebor arrives to relieve Commander Darquelnoy, and their conversations reveal the depth of the aliens' concern. Humanity has developed spacecraft. More troubling still, the aliens have noticed something unsettling in human nature: we unite beautifully against external threats, but destroy ourselves from within. As they monitor Earth's precarious progress, the two observers wait for the disaster they suspect is inevitable. The story is a Cold War parable wrapped in science fiction. It captures the paranoid atmosphere of an era that knew humanity possessed the power to end itself, and asks an uncomfortable question: if you're being watched by something greater, do you want them to intervene, or hope they look away?