Darbor around, explained some of the technicalities of
moon-mining to her. The girl misused some precious water to try
washing the alley-filth from her clothes. Her experiment was not a
success and the diaphanous wisps of moonsilver dissolved. She stood in
the wrapped blanket and was too tired and depressed even to cry.

"I guess it wasn't practical," she decided ruefully. "It did bunch up
in the weirdest places in your spare spacesuit. Have you any old rag I
could borrow?"

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 amb