One Against the Moon

by Donald A. Wollheim

He could see only a small section of the Moon, but that was impressive. A particularly rugged area of jagged mountains, huge craters, high walled and wide bottomed, with long rills and ridges running across the surfaces.

It shone white under the sun, with immensely black shadows breaking it where the sun failed to penetrate. Yet there were more than whites and grays and blacks here. He saw that without the atmosphere of Earth there were other more delicate shadings. The sides of some mountains had bluish and greenish tinges, and more than one crater bottom showed a distinct faint tinge of pale green, or in other spots yellowish blotches. And in one small spot he distinctly saw a mistiness of the surface, saw that a faint fuzziness barred the clear sight of the crater bottom.

He stared with wonder at the sight and the Moon slowly turned out of his vision as the rocket turned. He looked away, deep in thought.

He had read enough about the Moon in his astronomical readings. He knew the various theories, the latest conjectures. He knew that mistiness, that evidences of clouding had been seen often by astronomers, but the sight was nevertheless rare. No two astronomers ever happened to be looking at the same place at the same time. It was always one man's word, and it was never possible to predict such a thing, nor to photograph it.

He knew that those men who made a special study of the Moon recognized these things and had come to accept them as evidence that what was once regarded as a dead world was not entirely dead. They had charted these color shifts in certain spots, one or two areas could be predicted well enough to occasionally be provable to others. Pickering had seen many such color changes, had even attributed it to some sort of fast-growing vegetation.

Robin remembered that it was now largely believed that the Moon had not quite ceased its volcanic internal action. He recalled that astronomers had begun to admit that the evidence of these bits of mist and the further evidence of actual mapped changes in the Lunar topography had proved that something was still warm and boiling within the crust of Old Luna.

Then it occurred to Robin that if the Moon were that close to him, he might really be falling upon it!

He peered out, saw again a section of Luna in view. It was close. Evidently the nose of the rocket had indeed been propelled far beyond Earth's atmosphere, beyond its gravitational grip. If the Moon had been elsewhere, perhaps the rocket nose would have swung about and eventually returned to fall upon the Earth, as Robin had originally surmised. But by chance his orbit, that of the rocket nose in free space, had cut too close to the body of the Moon. The rocket was dangerously near to being seized in the grip of the Moon's gravity and pulled down to it.

Robin mulled this thought over and realized that it was possibly the truth. He glued his eye to the peephole and tried to determine where he was.

After a while, he saw that the Moon was gradually increasing in size. The rocket nose was definitely approaching the Lunar sphere. Because the Earth no longer swung into view, Robin also realized that the rocket nose must have reversed itself, must be heading moonward, must be falling to the Moon!