develop kinks in his head to survive. And those
kinks--

The first men to leave the colony had to be knocked cold and shipped
out unconscious. They'd been underground--and in low gravity--long
enough to be utterly unable to face the idea of open spaces. Even now
there were some who had to be carried, but there were some tougher ones
who were able to walk to the rocketship if Pop put a tarpaulin over
their heads so they didn't have to see the sky. In any case Pop was
essential, either for carrying or guidance.

* * * * *

Sattell got the shakes when he thought of Pop, and Pop rather probably
knew it. Of course, by the time he took the job tending the shack, he
was pretty certain about Sattell. The facts spoke for themselves.

Pop had come back to consciousness in a hospital with a great wound in
his head and no memory of anything that had happened before that moment.
It was not that his identity was in question. When he was stronger, the
doctors told him who he was, and as gently as possible what had happened
to his wife and children. They'd been murdered after he was seemingly
killed defending them. But he didn't remember a thing. Not then. It was
something of a blessing.

But when he was physically recovered he set about trying to pick up the
threads of the life he could no longer remember. He met Sattell quite by
accident. Sattell looked familiar. Pop eagerly tried to ask him
questions. And Sattell turned gray and frantically denied that he'd ever
seen Pop before.

All of which happened back on Earth and a long time ago. It seemed to
Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy
memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell again to
find out if he was right. And Sattell went into panic when he returned.

Nowadays, by the Big Crack, Pop wasn't so insistent on seeing Sattell,
but he was deeply concerned with the recovery of the memories that
Sattell helped bring back. Pop was a highly conscientious man. He took
good care of his job. There was a warning-bell in the shack, and when a
rocketship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a tight
beam, the gong clanged loudly, and Pop got into a vacuum-suit and went
out the air lock. He usually reached the moondozer about the time the
ship began to brake for landing, and he watched it come in.

He saw the silver needle in the sky fighting momentum above a line of
jagged crater-walls.