Fifteen men in shining, bulky air-tight suits stood beside the great hull that had brought them across a quarter of a million miles of space, and landed them at last on this airless satellite world. Warm golden light still shone from the windows of the giant machine, the greatest rocket ship Earth had ever produced. Harsh, electric-blue sunlight glinted on the jet-shadowed spires of the crater wall beyond. In the near foreground was the cracked, pitted surface of a crater-bottom, scarred and broken by ages-old moon-quakes, fading into a horizon strangely near, made jagged by incredibly rugged crater walls. And above, in a star studded sky hung a blue-white ball of fire, the unshielded sun. There was no air here; warmth was only where the sun was. Night was everywhere, hidden from the blue
