The rabbits nibbled on. The monkey sat on a ball in one of the strange trees and watched in silence. Far off, somewhere in the cavern, the mysterious hissing continued. _8. Robinson Crusoe Carew_ When Robin Carew opened his eyes, he knew he was a very sick man. He felt warm, sticky, and he hurt all over. He tried to sit up, but everything spun dizzily around him. His arms, legs, and body were burning intolerably and there was an itch throughout him that he could do nothing about. He lay back, trying to gain strength. A little later he managed to crawl to the water's edge, fill the container he had used in the trip from Earth, drag himself back. For a period whose length he could not determine he lay helpless in fever and pain, arousing himself only long enough to drink to soothe his tortured body. Finally, the fever broke. He sat up, feeling weak but with his mind clear at long last. He dragged himself to his feet, blessing the light gravity, aware that if he were back home his body would not have responded. He felt that he was gaunt, he knew he had been through a terrible siege, and he could only guess at the time he had lain there, tossing about on the strange Lunar ground, unprotected in the queer climate of this unknown cavern. It must, he felt, have been days--Earth days, of course--that his attack had lasted. Later on he decided that he had suffered from a severe case of space burn. Having traveled through the emptiness of the void between the planets, the vessel had been nearly unprotected from the cosmic rays and the more penetrating of the sun's invisible rays. He considered himself lucky to have survived at all. He desperately needed food now to rebuild his body. He looked at the rabbit pen. The little animals were there and evidently prospering on the ball-food he had prepared for them before his sickness. It was almost all gone and he broke open and pared more at once. He wondered how long it would be before the animals bred--he knew that rabbits bred fast and abundantly, and hoped it would hold true on the Moon. There was a sudden chattering in one of the strange trees and he looked up to see a little brown face peering at him. In a moment, the monkey leaped to the ground, then leaped in one tremendous jump to Robin's shoulder and perched there happy at finding companionship again. The monkey looked none the worse for its experience and evidently was getting along nicely on the Lunar vegetation. Thus encouraged, Robin fed himself, first carefully testing everything on the monkey, who objected to nothing. But somehow the food was not entirely satisfying to the man, who felt that he needed more than that to recover his full energy. He looked again at the rabbits, looked also for the carcass of the dead one. But he found that part of it had rotted and part had been consumed. He looked closely and saw his first glimpse of a Lunar counterpart to animal life.