"I've spent as many hours underground as there are seeds in a watermelon—so I can take a cave interior in my stride. But the mound wasn't just hollow and cavelike and filled with wavering shadows. It was—occupied!
"He was sitting on a projecting ledge in deep shadows. But the wall behind him glowed, and I could see him clearly. He was wearing a space-suit exactly like my own, but it was all shriveled up over him.
"Take a little monkey—a lemur or a spectral tarsier will do—and put him inside a cumbersome space-suit, and let his bright eyes shine out through the viewpane. Do that—and you'll have as clear a picture of him as I could give you if I rambled on for ten minutes.
"I couldn't see the little fellow's face through the pane. It was all a shadowy blue. But I could see his bright eyes, and I could tell he was little by the way the suit overlapped, and bulged out in the wrong places.
"You know how a kid of eight or ten looks when he puts on a man's suit on Hallowe'en? But this wasn't Hallowe'en, and he wasn't trying to scare anyone!
"He was too scared himself. He was shaking all over and when he saw me his eyes got even brighter, and he started to get up. He was trembling so I had to help him to his feet.
"I steadied him with one arm and lifted off the helmet with my free hand. As you know, you can stay outside a suit on the moon without getting frost-bitten for about half a minute.
"When his face came into view and his eyes looked straight into mine I was so startled that fifteen seconds were lost right at the start—before a single word could be exchanged between us. But at least I had a chance to get a good look at him.
"If you saw yourself as a boy of ten, suddenly, without warning, would you recognize yourself? Maybe some men would. If you looked at yourself a lot in a mirror when you were growing up—or kept photographs of yourself, carefully preserved in an old album, you might not have any trouble. Right off you might hear yourself muttering, 'Why, that's me!'
"But I had trouble. The kid's face was just enough like my own to give me a start. But I couldn't really place it—couldn't remember where I had seen it before.