can't see at all.
This other will be easy."

There was no boastfulness in the tone, and Spud O'Malley nodded as he
glanced respectfully at the young man who threw back his disheveled mop
of hair from a lean face and marked down some cryptic figures on a
record sheet.

Chet Bullard was on the job ... and his passenger, it would seem, was
satisfied that his unbelievable adventure was well begun.

CHAPTER IV

_Life Monstrous and Horrible_

"It looks," said Spud O'Malley, "as if some bad little spalpeen of the
skies had thrown pebbles at it when 'twas soft. It's fair pockmarked
with places where the stones have hit."

He was staring through a forward lookout, where the whole sky seemed
filled with a tremendous disk. One quarter was brilliantly alight; it
formed a fat crescent within whose arms the rest of the globe was held
in fainter glowing. By comparison, this greater portion was dark, though
illuminated by earthlight far brighter than any moonlight on Earth.

But light or dark, the surface showed nothing but an appalling
desolation where the rocky expanse had been still further torn and
disrupted--pockmarked, as O'Malley had said, with great rings that had
been the walls of tremendous volcanoes.

Chet was consulting a map where a similar area of circular markings had
been named by scientists of an earlier day.

"Hercules," he mused, and stared out at the great circle of the moon.
"The crater of Hercules! Yes, that must be it. That dark area off to one
side is the Lake of Dreams; below it is the Lake of Death. Atlas!
Hercules! Suffering cats, what volcanoes they must have been!"

"I don't like your names," objected O'Malley. "Lake of Death! That's
not so good. And I don't see any lake, and the whole Moon is wrong side
up, according to your map."

Chet reached for the ball-control, moved it, and swung their ship in a
slow, rotary motion. The result was an apparent revolution of the Moon.

"There, it's right side up," Chet laughed; "that is, if you can tell me
what direction is 'up' out here in space. And, as for the names, don't
let them disturb you; they don't mean anything. Some old-timer with a
little three-inch telescope probably named them. The darker areas looked
like seas to them. Astronomers have known better for a long time; and
you and I--we're darned sure of it now."

* * * * *

The great sea of shadow, a darker area within the shaded portion whose
only