"I didn't know they'd traced even that."

"Oh, yes. But as for people--!"

"By the way," I asked, "how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show
upon the moon?"

"One could see a fair-sized church. One could certainly see any towns or
buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men. There might perhaps be
insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that they could
hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures
having no earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing, if we are to
find life there at all. Think of the difference in conditions! Life must
fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless
sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal length, growing
ever colder and colder under these, cold, sharp stars. In that night
there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273 degrees
Centigrade, below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is
must hibernate through that, and rise again each day."

He mused. "One can imagine something worm-like," he said, "taking its
air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters--"

"By the bye," I said, "why didn't we bring a gun?"

He did not answer that question. "No," he concluded, "we just have to go.
We shall see when we get there."

I remembered something. "Of course, there's my minerals, anyhow," I said;
"whatever the conditions may be."