number of Soviets. We ought to have cured human poverty and suffering before wasting milliards on space."
"Still, there are men on Mona, on their way to the stars."
"Four Americans. I have more respect for that New Englander Wolf Loner who sailed from Bristol last month in his dory. At least he wasn't staking the world's wealth on his adventurous whim."
Dai grinned, without taking his eyes off the west.
"Be damned to Loner, that Yankee anachronism! He's most likely drowned and feeding the fishes. But the Americans write fine science fiction and make moonships almost as good as the Russkies'. Good night, Mona-bach! Come back dirty-faced or clean, but come back."
Chapter Two
Through his mushroom helmet's kingsize view window, still polarized at half max to guard his eyes from solar glare, Lieutenant Don Merriam USSF watched the last curved sliver of solid sun, already blurred by Earth's atmosphere, edge behind the solid bulk of the mother planet.
The last twinges of orange light reproduced with frightening exactitude the winter sun setting through the black tangle of leafless trees a quarter mile west of the Minnesota farmhouse where Don Merriam had spent his childhood.
Twisting his head toward the righthand mini-console, he tongued a key to cut polarization. ("The airless planets will be pioneered by men with long, active tongues,"
Commander Gompert had summed it up. "Frogmen?" Dufresne had suggested.) The stars sprang out in their multitudes—a desert night squared, a night with sequins. The pearly shock of Sol's corona blended with the Milky Way.
Earth was ringed by a ruddy glow—sunlight bent by the planet's thick atmosphere—and would remain so throughout the eclipse. The ring was brightest near the planet's crust, fading out a quarter diameter away, and brightest of all along the lefthand rim behind which the sun had just vanished.
Don noted without surprise that the central bulk of Earth was the blackest he had ever seen it. Because of the eclipse, it was no longer brushed with the ghostly glow of moonlight.
He had been half crouched in his suit, leaning back and supporting himself on one arm to get an easy view of Earth, which was halfway to his zenith. Now with a wrist-flick nicely gauged to the moon's dreamy gravitation, he came fully to his feet and looked around him.
Starlight and ring-glow tinged with bronze the dark gray plain of dust, mouse-soft, a mixture of powdered pumice and magnetic iron oxide.
Back when Cromwell's New Model Army ruled England, Hevelius had named this crater the Great Black Lake. But even in bright sunlight Don could not have seen the walls of Plato. That near-mile-high, circular rampart, thirty miles away from him moon-east, north, south, and west, was hidden by the curve of the moon's surface, sharper than the earth's.
The same close horizon cut off the bottom half of the Hut, only three hundred yards away. It was good to see those five little glowing portholes at the margin between the dark plain and the starfield—and near them, silhouetted by starlight, the truncated cones of the base's three rocket ships, each standing high on its three landing legs.
"How's the dark dark?" Johannsen's voice softly asked in his ear. "Roger and over."
"Warm and spicy. Suzie sends love," Don responded. "Roger to you."
"Outside temperature?"
Don glanced down at the magnified fluorescent dials beneath the view window.
"Dropping past 200 Kelvin," he replied, giving the absolute equivalent of a temperature of almost exactly 100 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale still widely used in Earth's English-speaking areas.
"Your SOS working?" Johannsen continued.
Don tongued a key and a faint musical ululation filled his helmet. "Loud and clear, my captain," he said with a flourish.
"I can hear it," Johannsen assured him sourly. Don tongued it off.
"Have you harvested our cans?" Johannsen next asked, referring to the tiny, rod-supported cannisters regularly put out and collected to
"Still, there are men on Mona, on their way to the stars."
"Four Americans. I have more respect for that New Englander Wolf Loner who sailed from Bristol last month in his dory. At least he wasn't staking the world's wealth on his adventurous whim."
Dai grinned, without taking his eyes off the west.
"Be damned to Loner, that Yankee anachronism! He's most likely drowned and feeding the fishes. But the Americans write fine science fiction and make moonships almost as good as the Russkies'. Good night, Mona-bach! Come back dirty-faced or clean, but come back."
Chapter Two
Through his mushroom helmet's kingsize view window, still polarized at half max to guard his eyes from solar glare, Lieutenant Don Merriam USSF watched the last curved sliver of solid sun, already blurred by Earth's atmosphere, edge behind the solid bulk of the mother planet.
The last twinges of orange light reproduced with frightening exactitude the winter sun setting through the black tangle of leafless trees a quarter mile west of the Minnesota farmhouse where Don Merriam had spent his childhood.
Twisting his head toward the righthand mini-console, he tongued a key to cut polarization. ("The airless planets will be pioneered by men with long, active tongues,"
Commander Gompert had summed it up. "Frogmen?" Dufresne had suggested.) The stars sprang out in their multitudes—a desert night squared, a night with sequins. The pearly shock of Sol's corona blended with the Milky Way.
Earth was ringed by a ruddy glow—sunlight bent by the planet's thick atmosphere—and would remain so throughout the eclipse. The ring was brightest near the planet's crust, fading out a quarter diameter away, and brightest of all along the lefthand rim behind which the sun had just vanished.
Don noted without surprise that the central bulk of Earth was the blackest he had ever seen it. Because of the eclipse, it was no longer brushed with the ghostly glow of moonlight.
He had been half crouched in his suit, leaning back and supporting himself on one arm to get an easy view of Earth, which was halfway to his zenith. Now with a wrist-flick nicely gauged to the moon's dreamy gravitation, he came fully to his feet and looked around him.
Starlight and ring-glow tinged with bronze the dark gray plain of dust, mouse-soft, a mixture of powdered pumice and magnetic iron oxide.
Back when Cromwell's New Model Army ruled England, Hevelius had named this crater the Great Black Lake. But even in bright sunlight Don could not have seen the walls of Plato. That near-mile-high, circular rampart, thirty miles away from him moon-east, north, south, and west, was hidden by the curve of the moon's surface, sharper than the earth's.
The same close horizon cut off the bottom half of the Hut, only three hundred yards away. It was good to see those five little glowing portholes at the margin between the dark plain and the starfield—and near them, silhouetted by starlight, the truncated cones of the base's three rocket ships, each standing high on its three landing legs.
"How's the dark dark?" Johannsen's voice softly asked in his ear. "Roger and over."
"Warm and spicy. Suzie sends love," Don responded. "Roger to you."
"Outside temperature?"
Don glanced down at the magnified fluorescent dials beneath the view window.
"Dropping past 200 Kelvin," he replied, giving the absolute equivalent of a temperature of almost exactly 100 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale still widely used in Earth's English-speaking areas.
"Your SOS working?" Johannsen continued.
Don tongued a key and a faint musical ululation filled his helmet. "Loud and clear, my captain," he said with a flourish.
"I can hear it," Johannsen assured him sourly. Don tongued it off.
"Have you harvested our cans?" Johannsen next asked, referring to the tiny, rod-supported cannisters regularly put out and collected to
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