The world grew still for a few moments, as it does at the center of a typhoon. Then there was a great, soft roaring. The shock wave of expanded, rarefied gases, speeding at many hundreds of miles per second, striking the upper terrestrial atmosphere, and pressing down. Eddie could feel the pressure of it, transmitted by the air--a light but definite punching inward of his flesh, from all sides. Then there was a distant sighing of wind--air, super-heated and compressed, being forced outward. Next came the resurgence of human sounds, if they were truly that any more. Someone was yelling, "Oh, God ... Oh, God ... Oh, God...." There was a crackle and smell of fire. Something blew up far off. Then the earthquakes began. With a sharp snap, rock strata far underground broke. Then came a jolt. Eddie Dukas and his mother, huddled on the floor, were engulfed in a swaying sensation, smooth and vibrationless. Then the ground quivered softly. After that, there was a pause, as of something hanging precariously for a moment at the jagged lip of a chasm. Suddenly the pathetic hold seemed to be broken, and the whole world was seized by a tooth-cracking chatter. A pause.... Then it began again. For a second Eddie's mother almost lost her control. She tried to rise. "The house!" she stammered. "It'll fall on us." Panic and reason fought inside Eddie. "No, Mom," he gasped. "The house has a steel frame. It'll probably hold together. Outside, we don't know what would happen to us." They both braced themselves for the next seismic burst. They were both creatures of luxury, science-made. But planning, training, psychology--science it all was, too--had given them ruggedness and courage, a reserve of strength against hysteria--while the earth rattled again and again. Eddie's mom kept saying things, and it was all something like a formula that had been learned, a rote, a parroted incantation: "You're right, Eddie. We've got to think before we do anything. They always tell us that life is an adventure. We've got to meet a bigger future or be destroyed, Eddie. Everything takes nerve." At last the earthquake shocks lessened both in intensity and frequency. Maybe the worst was over. Eddie risked an eye, and then nudged his mother. Beyond the undamaged flexoglass of the windows night had returned, red-lit from both sky and ground. The firmament was smeared with a ruddy glow extending in a great curve, beaded with more intense blobs at several points. Dust of the Moon, it had to be. Of its rock and pumice shell. And of its core of meteoric iron. But that sullen effulgence was fading now, as matter cooled and began simply to reflect solar light back to this dark side of Earth.