is getting his metal and find
some soft enough to hammer into dishes. We can't call the department
store by radiophone, you know, and have them shoot a bunch of stuff out
by pneumatic tube."

"That's all right," Chet mocked; "by the time you have built a house
with only a stone ax in your tool kit, you'll think the rest of it is
simple."

* * * * *

The barricade, or _chevaux de frise_ as Chet insisted upon calling it,
to show his deep study of the wars of earlier days, was built in the
form of a U. The knoll itself sloped on one side directly to the water's
edge: they had left that side open and carried their line of sharp
stakes down to the water, that in the event of a siege they would not be
conquered by thirst.

On the highest point of the knoll, some few weeks later, a house was
being built--a more pretentious structure, this, than the other little
huts. The aerial roots that the white trees dropped from their
high-flung branches were not impossible to cut with their crude
implements; they made good building material for a house whose framework
must be tied together with vines and tough roots. This would be the home
of Harkness and Diane.

The two had been insistent that this structure would be incomplete
without a room for Chet, but the pilot only laughed at that suggestion.

"It's an old saying," he told them, "that one house isn't big enough for
two families. I think the remark is as old as the institution of
marriage, just about. And it's as true on the Dark Moon as it is on
Earth. And, besides, I intend to build some bachelor apartments that
will make this place of yours look pretty cheap, that is, if I ever find
time. I am going to be pretty busy just roaming around this little world
seeing what I can see. Even Herr Kreiss has got the wanderlust, you will
notice."

"He has been gone four days," said Diane. Her tone was frankly worried.
Chet finished tying a sapling to a row of uprights and slid to the
ground.

* * * * *

"Don't be alarmed about Kreiss," he reassured her. "He has been
all-fired mysterious for the past several weeks. He's been working on
something in that cave of his, and visitors have not been admitted. When
he left he told me he would be gone for some time, and he looked at me
like an owl when he said it: his mysterious secret was making his eyes
pop out. He has a surprise up his sleeve."

"Wedding present for Diane,