His father laughed. “You’ll get your bearings presently, Son.”
How long Jerry had waited to make this space mail run with his father! Then finally last year, Capt. Welsh had said that Jerry could go with him when he became twelve, as he was especially husky and strong for his age.
But now that the great moment had come at last, Jerry wasn’t sure he was enjoying it as he had expected, for he had found space so vast, so dark, and so frightening.
“Do you still want to be a spaceman, Jerry?” his dad asked suddenly, as though Jerry had spoken his thoughts aloud.
“I—I think so, Dad,” he replied hesitantly.
“I see you’re doubtful, Jerry,” Capt. Welsh said. “I won’t put you on the spot so early.”
They climbed into space gear—electrically-heated suits and clear plastic helmets fitted with radios. Lastly they donned oxygen tanks and flooded their suits with the life-sustaining gas.
They gathered up the mail sacks and climbed down the ladder to the ground, heading for the largest of a group of buildings which made up Moonhaven, center of Earthmen’s activity on the airless planet.
The stars burned fantastically bright overhead. Traces of frost topped the distant Lunar Alps. It was incredibly cold out here, for the Moon was in its two-week period of night.
Capt. Welsh got a receipt for the largest mail bag, and then he and Jerry went out a rear door of the building carrying the rest. An atom-powered mail car awaited them. It had an open top and huge wheels that looked like saw-toothed gears.