igure. No cargo came drifting down with the singular
deliberation of falling objects on the Moon.

[Illustration]

It was just barely past lunar sunrise on the far side of the Moon.
Incredibly long and utterly black shadows stretched across the plain,
and half the rocketship was dazzling white and half was blacker than
blackness itself. The sun still hung low indeed in the black,
star-speckled sky. Pop waded through moondust, raising a trail of slowly
settling powder. He knew only that the ship didn't come from Lunar City,
but from Earth. He couldn't imagine why. He did not even wildly connect
it with what--say--Sattell might have written with desperate
plausibility about greasy-seeming white crystals out of the mine,
knocking about Pop Young's shack in cannisters containing a hundred
Earth-pounds weight of richness.

* * * * *

Pop reached the rocketship. He approached the big tail-fins. On one of
them there were welded ladder-rungs going up to the opened air-lock
door.

He climbed.

The air-lock was perfectly normal when he reached it. There was a glass
port in the inner door, and he saw eyes looking through it at him. He
pulled the outer door shut and felt the whining vibration of admitted
air. His vacuum suit went slack about him. The inner door began to open,
and Pop reached up and gave his helmet the practiced twisting jerk
which removed it.

Then he blinked. There was a red-headed man in the opened door. He
grinned savagely at Pop. He held a very nasty hand-weapon trained on
Pop's middle.

"Don't come in!" he said mockingly. "And I don't give a damn about how
you are. This isn't social. It's business!"

Pop simply gaped. He couldn't quite take it in.

"This," snapped the red-headed man abruptly, "is a stickup!"

Pop's eyes went through the inner lock-door. He saw that the interior of
the ship was stripped and bare. But a spiral stairway descended from
some upper compartment. It had a handrail of pure, transparent,
water-clear plastic. The walls were bare insulation, but that trace of
luxury remained. Pop gazed at the plastic, fascinated.

The red-headed man leaned forward, snarling. He slashed Pop across the
face with the barrel of his weapon. It drew blood. It was wanton, savage
brutality.

"Pay attention!" snarled the red-headed man. "A stickup, I said! Get it?
You go get that can of stuff from the mine! The diamonds! Bring them
here! Understand?"

Pop said num