City on the Moon

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THERE were clankings and motor noises inside the sealed body of the moon-jeep, but these were the only sounds anywhere. The huge metal wheels rolled over stone, and inside the jeep the din was audible, while outside there was utter silence. The great vehicle, with its dangling load, moved with the noiselessness of a phantom so far as the landscape was concerned. There could be no noise whatsoever outside the airtight tube which was the jeep's cabin. This was the moon, a world without air.

The vehicle moved among mountains, crawling on twenty-foot, spidery wheels over the fantastic terrain. The time was night, and the full Earth hung overhead, embedded in a sky of numberless, untwinkling stars. Earthlight poured down, casting shadows, and the moon-jeep glittered faintly as it moved among pinnacles and potholes in a nightmare of violence made real. This was the lunar surface, the scene of an ancient bombardment when meteors and mountains fell from the sky and ravaged the face of a world that was already dead. The moonscape was pure confusion; it was chaos; it was sheer desolation.

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