The Mating of the Moons
by Kenneth O'Hara
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
SHE CAME TO MARS IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING, SHE KNEW NOT WHAT, TO GIVE HER LIFE MEANING. SHE FOUND IT ... IN A WAY....
The sun glared, fiercely detached. The thin air suddenly seemed friendless, empty, a vast lake of poison and glassy water. All at once, the stretching plains of sand began to waver with a terrible insubstantiality before Madeleine's eyes.
Even the Ruins of Taovahr were false. And for Madeleine, even if they were not false, there was no sign of the outer garments of dream with which, on a thousand lonely nights back home on the Earth, she had clothed those dusty scattered skeletons of crumbled stone.