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DOCUMENT 1 To be the skipper of the only boat on the Moon was a distinction that Pat Harris enjoyed. As the passengers filed aboard Selene, jockeying for window seats, he wondered what sort of trip it would be this time. In the rear-view mirror he could see Miss Wilkins,
DOCUMENT 1 To be the skipper of the only boat on the Moon was a distinction that Pat Harris enjoyed. As the passengers filed aboard Selene, jockeying for window seats, he wondered what sort of trip it would be this time. In the rear-view mirror he could see Miss Wilkins, very smart in her blue Lunar Tourist Commission uniform, putting on her usual welcome act. He 5 always tried to think of her as 'Miss Wilkins', not Sue, when they were on duty together; it helped him to keep his mind on business. But what she thought of him, he had never really discovered. There were no familiar faces; this was a new bunch, eager for their first cruise. Most of the passengers were typical tourists – elderly people, visiting a world that had been the very 10 symbol of inaccessibility when they were young. There were only four or five passengers on the low side of thirty, and they were probably technical personnel on vacation from one of the lunar bases. It was a fairly good working rule, Pat had discovered, that all the old people came from Earth, while the youngsters were residents of the Moon. But to all of them the Sea of Thirst was a novelty. Beyond Selene's observation windows 15 its grey, dusty surface marched onwards unbroken until it reached the stars. Above it hung the waning crescent Earth, poised for ever in the sky from which it had not moved in a billion years. The brilliant, blue-green light of the mother world flooded this strange land with a cold radiance – and cold it was indeed, perhaps three hundred below zero on the exposed surface. [...] 20 Selene's official designation was Dust-cruiser, Mark I, though to the best of Pat's knowledge a Mark 2 did not exist even on the drawing-board. She was called 'ship', 'boat' or 'moon-bus' according to taste; Pat preferred 'boat', for it prevented confusion. When he used that word, no one would mistake him for the skipper of a space-ship – and space- ship captains were, of course, two a penny. 25 "Welcome aboard Selene," said Miss Wilkins, when everyone had settled down. "Captain Harris and I are pleased to have you with us. Our trip will last for four hours, and our first objective will be Crater Lake, a hundred kilometres east of here in the Mountains of Inaccessibility…"