“It’s a long way. You’re thin, boy.”

“Food doesn’t nourish me. Men cannot live on bread only, not even brown bread made at home.”

“No.”

“Now in the moon, perhaps, I should get fat.”

“Perhaps indeed, and I too. But look at the moon. You give me the horrors. You couldn’t live there.”

It was a thin three-quarters of a circle in a hot sky.

“But,” I said, “I should like to try.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, provided I were someone different. For, as for me, this is no doubt the best of all possible worlds.”