Operation: Outer Space by [pseud.] Murray Leinster
page 32 of 237 (13%)
page 32 of 237 (13%)
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The psychiatrist looked puffy and sleepy and haggard and disheveled.
When a person does have space-sickness, even a little weight relieves the symptoms, but the consequences last for days. "Don't worry!" he said sourly when he saw Cochrane's eyes upon him. "I won't waste any time! I'll find my man and get to work at once. Just let me get back to Earth...." There were more clankings--the jeep-bus sealing off from the rocket. Then the vehicle stirred. The landscape outside began to move. They saw Lunar City as they approached it. It was five giant dust-heaps, from five hundred-odd feet in height down to three. There were airlocks at their bases and dust-covered tunnels connecting them, and radar-bowls about their sides. But they were dust-heaps. Which was completely reasonable. There is no air on the moon. By day the sun shines down with absolute ferocity. It heats everything as with a furnace-flame. At night all heat radiates away to empty space, and the ground-temperature drops well below that of liquid air. So Lunar City was a group of domes which were essentially half-balloons--hemispheres of plastic brought from Earth and inflated and covered with dust. With airlocks to permit entrance and exit, they were inhabitable. They needed no framework to support them because there were no stormwinds or earthquakes to put stresses on them. They needed neither heating nor cooling equipment. They were buried under forty feet of moon-dust, with vacuum between the dust-grains. Lunar City was not beautiful, but human beings could live in it. The jeep-bus carried them a bare half mile, and they alighted inside a lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they emerged |
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