Eddie's mother almost lost her control. She tried to rise. "The house!" she stammered. "It'll fall on us."

Panic and reason fought inside Eddie. "No, Mom," he gasped. "The house has a steel frame. It'll probably hold together. Outside, we don't know what would happen to us."

They both braced themselves for the next seismic burst. They were both creatures of luxury, science-made. But planning, training, psychology—science it all was, too—had given them ruggedness and courage, a reserve of strength against hysteria—while the earth rattled again and again.

Eddie's mom kept saying things, and it was all something like a formula that had been learned, a rote, a parroted incantation: "You're right, Eddie. We've got to think before we do anything. They always tell us that life is an adventure. We've got to meet a bigger future or be destroyed, Eddie. Everything takes nerve."

At last the earthquake shocks lessened both in intensity and frequency. Maybe the worst was over.

Eddie risked an eye, and then nudged his mother.

Beyond the undamaged flexoglass of the windows night had returned, red-lit from both sky and ground. The firmament was smeared with a ruddy glow extending in a great curve, beaded with more intense blobs at several points. Dust of the Moon, it had to be. Of its rock and pumice shell. And of its core of meteoric iron. But that sullen effulgence was fading now, as matter cooled and began simply to reflect solar light back to this dark side of Earth.

Yet everywhere outside there was fire. The towering glow in the east—that would be the City, fifty miles away. Destruction and confusion there would be unimaginable. Nearer at hand, trees were aflame—leaves and branches that minutes ago had been cool with greenness now blazed wildly. Mixed with the tumult of voices was the clang of robot fire units.

Eddie rushed to the radio and turned it on, as he had been taught to do in emergencies. You listened; you obeyed directions. "... lunar blowup," someone was saying. "Follow the usual precautions and measures for radioactive contamination and flesh burns. Rescue and relief units are already in action. Fortunately most of our buildings are not made of combustible materials...."

For minutes Eddie was furiously busy, rubbing special salves and lotions into the skin of his entire body. Then, dressed in fresh clothes, he and his mother 

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