Denver found cause for unsafe mirth in the spectacle of her blanketed disaster. "I'll see." He rooted about in a locker and found a worn pair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something more than adequately.
Charley fled her vicinity in extremes of voluble embarrassment as she changed and zipped up the substitute garments.
"Nice legs," Denver observed, which was an understatement.
"Watch out you don't skin those precious knees again," she warned darkly.
Time is completely arbitrary on the Moon as far as Earth people are concerned. One gets used to prolonged light and dark periods. Earth poked above the horizon, bathing the heights of the range with intense silver-blue light. But moonshadows lay heavily in the hollows and the deep gorges were still pools of intense gloom. Clocks are set to the meaningless twenty-four hour divisions of day and night on Earth, which have nothing to do with two-week days and nights on Luna. After sunset, with Earthlight still strong and pure and deceptively warm-looking, the landscapes become a barren, haunted wasteland.
Time itself seems unreal.
Time passed swiftly. The idyl was brief. For twenty-seven Earth-hours after their landing at the mines came company...!
An approaching ship painted a quick-dying trail of fire upon the black vault of sky. It swooped suddenly from nowhere, and the trapped fugitives debated flight or useless defense.
Alone, Denver would have stayed and fought, however uneven and hopeless the battle. But he found the girl a mental block to all thoughts of open, pitched battle on the shadowy, moonsilvered slopes. He might surprise the pursuers and flush them by some type of ambush. But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would end either in death or capture.
Neither alternative appealed to him. With Darbor, he had suddenly found himself possessed of new tenacity toward life, and he had desperate, painful desire to live for her.