is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.

Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"

"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."

"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."

"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.

Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"

I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.

"All right," I conceded.

Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.

A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."

Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"

Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."

We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"

A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.

"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.

We 

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