There had been a feeling about the moon that he just couldn’t capture. He had almost succeeded in one painting--then lost it again forever. It was the feeling of the haunted empty places, the stark extremes of the plains and boulders. It was an alien sensation that had killed him before he could imprison it in oil. The critics had thought his paintings were unique, wonderful, just what they had always thought the moon would be like. That was exactly his trouble. The airless satellite wasn’t at all like that. It was _different_--so different that he could never capture the difference. Now he was going to die, a failure in the only thing he had really wanted to do. The radiation fever was in him, eating away at his blood and bones. In a few months it would destroy him. He had been too reckless those last months, fighting against time. He had tried and failed ... it was as simple as that. The nurse put the phone down, frowning. “I’ve checked and what you say is true, Mr. Dalgreen. I won’t put it in my report if that’s what you want.” She helped him up. The moon was out of his thoughts later as one canvas after another swam into his vision. He bathed his senses in the collected art of the ages. This was his life, and he was enjoying it to the utmost, trying to make up for his year’s absence from the world. The Greek marbles soothed his mind and the Rembrandt portraits wakened his interest once again. He marvelled at the fact that after all the years he could still wander through these halls and have his interest recaptured. But he also wanted to see what the moderns were doing. The elevator took him to the Contemporary Wing. Almost at once, his quiet enjoyment was broken by _the_ painting. It was an autumn landscape, a representative example of the Classic-modern school that had been so popular for the last few years. However it had something else, an undefinable strangeness about it. His legs were beginning to tremble again; he knew that he had better rest for a few minutes.