did have
shielded windows--ports--and Babs instantly pulled herself into a seat
beside one and feasted her eyes. She saw the jagged peaks nearby and the
crenelated ring-mountain wall, miles off to one side, and the smooth
frozen lava of the "sea." Across that dusty surface the horizon was
remarkably near, and Cochrane remembered vaguely that the moon was only
one-fourth the size of Earth, so its horizon would naturally be nearer.
He glanced at the stars that shone even through the glass that denatured
the sunshine. And then he looked for Holden.

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
into a scene which no amount of television film-tape could really
portray.

The main dome was a thousand feet across and half as high. There were
green plants growing in tubs and pots. And the air was