Jim looked at him steadily and shrugged without answer. Hennesey was one guy whose presence on the space team Jim couldn't figure out. He was an ex-Major, and he had no capacity for dreaming. Men, machines, transistors, rockets--they were all the same thing, merely objects to be made to obey. "You are aware of your next sequence of duties, I trust?" said Hennesey. Jim nodded curtly. "I'll be ready." * * * * * Sixty-six hours to the moon. That's what it takes with marginal escape velocity and free-fall conditions. But it was really five hundred thousand years and sixty-six hours, Jim thought. Surely there hadn't been a single hour in all that time when someone, somewhere on earth had not felt the longing to solve the secret mystery of the moon. Now they were about to find the answer. But what would they have when they found it? They would know that the surface dust of the moon consisted of certain percentages of silicates and oxides. They would know that the under layers were composed of rocks, maybe of granite or limestone or basalt. They would determine how much of each. And then it would be over. The quest of the ages would be answered with a few simple statements that could be obtained in any high-school chemistry lab--if the lab were on the moon. Jim Cochran felt there _had_ to be more to it than that. Why do dogs howl at the moon on winter nights? Why do men say that madness of the mind is lunacy? Why must planting be done in the right phase of the moon? Little sleep was had by any of the crew during the next two nights, even though the instrument stage of the ship was now completely inert except for occasional telemetry signals that were fed to the computers for course checking and correction. The ship was simply falling on its own momentum. Six hours before moonfall, activities in the tracking center accelerated and the tension increased. There was no question of hitting the moon; the landing had to be made safe for the cargo of instruments. Jim Cochran watched the operators during this period. He told himself he didn't understand it, but he had actually learned a great deal of electronics during the past two years. He had had to in order to design and operate a chemical laboratory 240,000 miles away. The television screens came on, showing the pock-marked surface of the moon as the ship orbited. The thrill and the fear of the great unknown began to rise in Jim's throat. By the silence in the room, he was sure the others sensed it, too. Abruptly, the braking command was given and the ship began to fall out of orbit towards the planned landing in the Sea of Rains. On the screens, the images swelled as the ship plummeted faster. In one corner could be seen the spring-loaded extension legs, like those of some great spider. It seemed impossible that these could cushion the violent shock of landing.