Frank Belknap Long

“ The moon isn't that thickly populated.
"I was badly shaken, I can tell you! But I didn't sit down and brood over it. When you go into a huddle with yourself on the moon you're apt to wind up looking like an ice-carved replica of Rodin's Thinker.
"I simply shaded my helmet with my palm, to cut down the starshine, and stared across the valley. The valley was about a mile wide, and as smooth as a skating rink over most of its surface. But about halfway across a big mound of blue-gray sandstone broke the monotony by looming up on the frozen plain like an African termite's nest. ”

“ You can feel a stone wall arching above you without touching it, and I knew suddenly that I was in the clear.
"When I got to my feet and stared about me I could see the dark end of the tunnel and what appeared to be stone walls hemming me in. The walls arched away into shadows, and were faintly luminous.
"I've spent as many hours underground as there are seeds in a watermelon—so I can take a cave interior in my stride. But the mound wasn't just hollow and cavelike and filled with wavering shadows. ”

“ Before he could pick himself up a part of himself dissolved in some unimaginable backwash of time, and he became a boy again. His boy-self split off from him, and went stumbling off over the plain in a suit five sizes too large for him.
"It's not as impossible as it sounds. The boy you were still exists in Time, and he could emerge from the past to stand beside you in a vortex of dissolving Time. Was there something in the valley that could change the flow of time, reverse it, and twist it around like butter in a churn? ”

“ Then something in the glow seemed to reach out toward me and there was no sound in the cave but the beating of my heart.
"A ghastly something seemed to be watching me with a kind of fiendish triumph, as though the soul of a devil lurked in the depth of the light which could send out vampire tendrils, filmed with writhing menace.
"I couldn't tear my eyes from the glow and the longer I stared the worse it got.
"The light seemed filled with an evil purpose. It writhed and changed shape as I stared at it, seeming to sweep out through the walls of the cave and back again with a pulsing greediness. ”

“ You can talk to yourself that way and get comfort out of it, because what you'll hear will be the giant in yourself. The valley was so big a soaring eagle would have burst its lungs trying to fly out of it. ”

“ The brittle stars shine down and the great craters loom up, but when you're flying low in a rocket ship about all you can see through the viewpane is a circle of radiance spotlighting a desolation as bleak as the Siberian Steppes. ”

“ You miss so many things you don't dare even think about the earth. If you're an escapist you cover your bunk with pictures of the lush Venusian jungles and pretend you're somewhere else. But if you're a realist you go outside and come to grips with the bleakness in one way or another. ”

“ It was balancing itself on flapping wings, sweeping across the plain without actually touching it, but so slowly that it appeared to be advancing with the plodding, awkward gait of a man.
"It swerved abruptly as I stared, made a full turn, and soared into the air. It flew straight toward me, its wings beating the air as though it were struggling against a furious uprush of wind.
"There was a sloping wall of light-dappled rock at the edge of the radiance, and for an instant the winged shape disappeared behind it. I didn't see it descend. ”

“ The kid's face was just enough like my own to give me a start. But I couldn't really place it—couldn't remember where I had seen it before.
"Then the kid spoke. 'I—I thought you were Pops! But you're not! He's older! Where am I? How did I get here?'
"The voice did something to me. You get a chance to hear yourself talking a lot when you're knee-high to a grasshopper. And I had no kids of my own! But my own father had looked enough like me to be my twin brother, and if this kid thought I was his dad—
"It hit me between the eyes—and like a voice screaming at me through a blur of spinning suns! ”