An air-lock in the Nebula opened and a huge hose came slowly down. Odin watched it on the screen. It seemed to have been pleated and shoved together like an accordion. Now it opened out in little jerking movements, extending itself about two feet at each writhing twitch. As it grew longer it expanded and was nearly three feet across when it reached the top of the first car. A round door opened. Unseen hands reached the end of the big hose and fastened it securely.
Odin had often dreamed of landing on the moon. There, in the traditional space-suit, with a plastic bubble about his head, he would leap twenty feet into the air, and maybe even turn a somersault as a gesture of man’s escape from the tiring tyranny of gravity. Compared to this dream, his arrival upon the moon was just a bit ridiculous. He and over a score of others simply slid down the inside of the long, slanting hose like a group of third-graders practicing on the fire-escape at the school house.
Larger than the others, Odin landed awkwardly upon the floor of the car. Before he could jump aside, another passenger piled upon him. It was a girl, and the perfume in her hair was the same that Maya had always used. He helped her to her feet and drew her aside just as another voyager came sliding down. The girl was Nea. Somehow, he had an odd feeling that Maya was here. He was just a bit annoyed at Nea, and wished to himself that she wasn’t making the trip. She shook her black curls and thanked him softly.
“How awkward of me,” she explained. “It wouldn’t have happened if I had not been carrying this—”
She held up a little round satchel. It was exactly like the cases that people used in his country for carrying bowling balls. Odin was puzzled. And he assured himself that he would never understand women. Why would the girl be carrying a bowling ball with her into outer space?
Odin joined Wolden, Ato, and Gunnar in the “engine” of the bumpy little train. Here were real windows of quartz, and he could see more of the moon’s surface as the tractor and its jointed cars wheeled about in a great circle and headed off in the direction from whence it had come.
Once there was a loud Ping upon the roof above them. The tractor shook.
“A meteorite,” the driver explained. “They’re thick tonight. Don’t worry. There’s a screen upon the roof that slows them down and melts ’em. The larger ones never reach us. Some of the tiny ones get through.”
They came to a sheer mountain which in the beams of the tractor looked like a silver pyramid painted across a jet-black canvas.