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There was the sound of pumping, which grew fainter. The outer lock-door opened. The moon-jeep rolled outside. Babs stared with passionate rapture out of a shielded port. There were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years.
He was almost dozing when Babs touched his arm. "Space-suits, Mr. Cochrane." He got wearily into the clumsy costume. But he saw again that Babs wore the shining-eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her wear before. They got out of the moon-jeep, one after the other. The sling came down the space-ship's gleaming side. They got in it, together. It lifted them.
"I've got a jeep waiting for us." Babs stood up, her eyes shining. "May I come, Mr. Cochrane?" Cochrane waved her along. Holden tried to stalk gloomily, but nobody can stalk in one-sixth gravity. He reeled, and then depressedly accommodated himself to conditions on the moon. There was an airlock with a smaller edition of the moon-jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city.
Then there were clankings, and something fastened itself outside, and after a moment the entrance-door of the moonship opened. They went down the ramp to board the moon-jeep, holding onto the hand-rail and helping each other. The tourist giggled foolishly. They went out the thick doorway and found themselves in an enclosure very much like the interior of a rather small submarine.
The moon-jeep crunched and clanked and rumbled over the gently undulating lava sea beneath its giant wheels. Babs looked zestfully out of the windows. The picture was, of course, quite incredible.
There were some three thousand million suns in the immediate locality of Earth and more only a relatively short distance way and it had not mattered to anybody. The situation did not seem likely to change. But The moon-jeep climbed and climbed. It was a mile above the bay of the lava sea and the dust-heaps that were a city. It looked like ten miles, because of the curve of the horizon.
"The newsmen will pump West and Jamison empty, anyhow. It's all right. In fact, it's better than our own releases would be. They'll contradict each other. It'll sound more authentic that way. We're building up a customer-demand for information." The small moon-jeep rolled and bumped gently down the long, improbable highway back to Lunar City. Its engine ran smoothly, as steam-engines always do.
It stood upright on its tail-fins, and it had lighted ports and electric lights burned in the emptiness about it. But there was only one moon-jeep at its base. A space-suited figure moved toward a dangling sling and sat in it. He rose deliberately toward an open airlock-hatch, and the other moon-jeep moved soundlessly away back toward Lunar City. There was no debris about.
She hesitated and then flushed. The moon-jeep crunched and clanked loudly over the trail that led downhill. There was no sound outside, of course. There was no air. But the noise inside the moon-vehicle was notable. The steam-motor, in particular, made a highly individual racket. "I'd rather not say," said Babs awkwardly. "What's your own main feeling, Mr. Cochrane?" "Mine?" Cochrane grinned.
In two weeks your patient I'll guarantee it will be acclaimed the hope, the blessing, the greatest man in all the history of humanity! It'll be phoney, of course, but we'll have Marilyn Winters Little Aphrodite herself making passes at him in hopes of a publicity break! It's a natural!" "How'll you do it?" demanded Holden. The moon-jeep turned in its crazy, bumping progress.
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