a group of domes which were essentially half-balloons—­hemispheres of plastic brought from Earth and inflated and covered with dust.  With airlocks to permit entrance and exit, they were inhabitable.  They needed no framework to support them because there were no stormwinds or earthquakes to put stresses on them.  They needed neither heating nor cooling equipment.  They were buried under forty feet of moon-dust, with vacuum between the dust-grains.  Lunar City was not beautiful, but human beings could live in it.

The jeep-bus carried them a bare half mile, and they alighted inside a lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they emerged into a scene which no amount of television film-tape could really portray.

The main dome was a thousand feet across and half as high.  There were green plants growing in tubs and pots.  And the air was fresh!  It smelled strange.  There could be no vegetation on the rocket and it seemed new and blissful to breathe really freshened air after days of the canned variety.  But this freshness made Cochrane realize that he’d feel better for a bath.

He took a shower in his hotel room.  The room was very much like one on Earth, except that it had no windows.  But the shower was strange.  The sprays were tiny.  Cochrane felt as if he were being sprayed by atomizers rather than shower-nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very slowly and realized that a normal shower would have been overwhelming.  He scooped up a handful of water and let it drop.  It took a full second to fall two and a half feet.

It was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him feel better.  He went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel.  Everything in the dome was indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories high.  But everything was also out-doors in the sense of bright light and growing trees and bushes and shrubs.

He found Babs freshly garmented and waiting for him.  She said in businesslike tones: 

“Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk.  Doctor Holden has gone to consult Mr. Dabney.  He asked that we stay within call.  I’ve sent word to Mr. West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell.”

Cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency.

“Then we’ll sit somewhere and wait.  Since this isn’t an office, we’ll find some refreshment.”

They asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool.  And Babs wore her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated.  But this swimming pool was not like a pool on Earth.  The water was deeply sunk beneath the pool’s rim, and great waves surged back and forth.  The swimmers—.

Babs gasped.  A man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water.  He prepared to dive.

“That’s Johnny Simms!” she said, awed.

“Who’s he?”

“The playboy,” said Babs, staring.  “He’s a psychopathic personality and his family has millions.  They keep him up here out of trouble.  He’s married.”