The Door

planet Earth. It exerts a pull, as you all know, and it creates the tides, and it produces many different rhythms. It acts like a clock to the life on Earth, and it is part of the inbuilt biorhythms of most living things".

"So what?" said John, "We can't do much to the moon with our comparatively tiny bit of excavating?"

"No-ones knows that yet," said Paul. "It took only a tiny amount of DDT to change the face of agriculture for many years, it took only a tiny amount of fluoride to alter the growth pattern of millions of teeth... how do we know that removal of lunar soil is insignificant?"

Phillip sat down at the table, holding a glass of water.

"I hate to interrupt this conversation, but I think I ought to tell you I've hit something."

"What do you mean?" Paul asked.

"Just that. It's hard, and it's buried. My digger couldn't move it."

"Probably rock," said John, "A meteorite."

Phillip said nothing in reply. He knew John was probably right, but he didn't have anything to add, except his memory of the sudden jarring, and the powerful shaking as his dinosaur-like bucket strained to make an impression on the something under the rising dust. He knew he would have to try and get at it again in eight hours time so the matter was closed until then.

The men turned their attention to the vid-screen on the wall as an interesting item of Earth news appeared, and the matter so hotly debated only minutes before was left in abeyance until some other time.

TWO

Work started on the crater-face a short distance from the obstruction. It was Phillip's theory that whatever it was that lay below the smothering surface, it must be very large, because usually his digger managed to make an impression on even the biggest rocks, so he began a dig at what might be one end of the object. Some distance further down the crater face, he set John and Ralph with their quarriers, and he sent John up to the crest, to push soil downwards off the rim.

All the machines had to switch to scanners almost immediately, as the area became a sea of drifting and boiling dust. Giant treads churned, and huge electric motors vibrated as banks of storage batteries pumped power into the hydraulics. The hours passed