Al Marcusson bounced on a kind of lumpy featherbed two or three times before coming to rest in the same eggshell soup. Dust. Moon dust that had no particular reason for dropping back now cocooned the ship. He stood up with great care and staggered straight out, putting his feet down slowly to minimize dust puffs. The mist thinned and he rubbed the gloves against his visor and goggled.
Cliffs, craters, spines, crests and jags stood there as in the photographs except for a curious staginess he realized came from the harsh footlights effect of the twilight zone they'd landed in and from the shorter horizon with its backdrop of old black velvet dusty with stars. But the colors!
Ruby cliffs, surfaces meteor-pitted in places to a rosy bloom, rose to pinnacles of dull jade that fell again in raw emerald slopes; saffron splashes of small craters punctuated the violet sponge of scattered lava, topaz stalagmites reared against sapphire crests, amethyst spines pierced agate ridges ... and on every ledge, in every hollow, pale moondust lay like a blessing.
When you were a kid, did you ever wake up at night in a Pullman berth and hear the snoring and looked at the moonwashed countryside knowing you only were awake and hugging the knowledge to yourself? Did you ever set off alone at dawn to fish or hunt and watch the slow awakening of trees? Did you ever climb the wall into an abandoned estate and explore the park and suddenly come upon a statue half-hidden in honeysuckle, a statue with a secret smile?
Al Marcusson sat by himself on the twilight zone of the Moon and watched the sun shining through cloudy glass arches and throwing on moondust the same colored shadows that it throws through the great stained-glass windows on the flagstones of Chartres cathedral. He looked up at Earth, now in "New Earth" position, a majestic ring of blue fire flushed with violet, red and gold at the crescent where clouds flashed white iridescence. He jerked free the little bag that held his good luck charm and waited.
They came.
He could see them silhouetted against Earth, the long undulating V of them. Now he could discern their wings beating in the vacuum that couldn't support them and heard the wild lonely honking through the vacuum that couldn't transmit sound. White wings surged steadily nearer. Soon there was a tempest of white, a tempest that stirred no dust, and the swans settled about him.
Al Marcusson stood up.
"My Lady Selene," he began, speaking carefully although he knew that the sound could not be heard outside his helmet. "My Lady Luna, my Lady of the Swans, I greet you. I know of you through legends: I know you are Aphrodite the Swan-Rider, goddess of love that drives to suicide. I know you are the White Goddess, the Three-Women-in-One, who changes your slaves into swans. I know of your twin daughters, Helen the fair, bane of Troy, and dark Clytemnestra, Mycenae's destroyer. I know of your flight as the Wyrd of death who took great Beowulf of the Geats, of your quests as Diana of the cruel moonlit hunts; I remember your swan-wings shadowing the hosts of Prince Igor on the steppes, I have seen the rings of your sacred Hansa swans decorating the moon-shaped steps of temples in Ceylon, your flights of swans and geese on painted tombs beyond the Nile. The witches of my own Thessaly called upon you to work their spells. On the feast of Beltane, on the first of May, with hawthorn branches blooming white as your swans, the Celts did you honor. The folk on the Rhine brought you figurines of white clay and long remembered your wild Walpurgisnacht. But as other beliefs drove out the old, you went from the minds of men to those of children. Only in Andersen's tales do you still change your slaves into swans, only children understand the spells held in the foolish rhymes of Mother Goose. Children know of the lady who flies on goose's back, her cape dark behind her, and each generation in turn still listens to your spells, my Lady of the Swans. And sometimes poets, and sometimes hunters, and sometimes lovers look up at the moon and are afraid and acknowledge your power."