"My Lady Selene," he cried, "I bring an offering! I came alone, before the others, to tell you the new beliefs now come to your dwelling. I came to warn you, my Lady of the Swans, to beg you not to be wrathful against us, unwilling intruders, to ask you to take up your dwelling in another place, but not to deprive us of poetry, of witching spells and dreams, and all that the Moon has meant to us." He threw the crystal swan before him. The plumes about him foamed and a snowy form emerged, a moonstone with black opal eyes who smiled and began to sing. Marcusson's knees gave and his eyes closed. Then she spread great swan wings and soared, circling far lest her shadow fall on the crumpled spacesuited figure. She rose. And her swans--her thousand myriad swans--rose after her out of cracks, caves and craters, from beneath overhangs, from ledges, hollows and rock-falls, their plumes at first stained with the colors of the stone. They winged away, V after sinuous V, across Earth and into space. When the last swan had left the Moon became just another piece of colored rock. * * * * * Al Marcusson opened his eyes and made his way dully back into the dust cloud now shot with flashes of red-orange as Earth's laser beams searched for the capsule's nerve centers. He bumped against a strut and forced his way in. A hum filled the capsule. Ungainly jointed limbs, paddles, calyxes, sprouted from its outside walls. On Earth pens jiggled, tapes were punched, rows of figures in five columns appeared on blank pages, pulses jumped and two groggy, worn-out faces appeared on the control room screens. Hatter's eyes flickered over the boards and he opened his mouth. Some time later his disembodied voice came out of the monitor, reading dials, reporting on systems. Then the screens showed Al Marcusson's eyes opening in turn. Control could see him leaning forward towards the port, his face drawn in haggard lines and shadows, then letting his head fall back. "Hey," he said, "didn't Doc tell you guys dust gives me hay fever?" On Earth the men about the screens slapped each other's backs and grinned and wiped their eyes. Good old bellyaching Marcusson! Good old Al! The Moon was just another piece of rock, after all. But a star went nova in Cygnus, and lovers wished on it that night. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Lady Selene, by Magnus Ludens