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Paul Hagbolt had to ad, even when you&039;re with new friends and under a sky bright with a new planet The exhilaration of defying Colonel Humphreys and the Moon Project had worn off very quickly, and this backbreaking trudge across the beach seeets lonely, doesn&039;t it?" Ra protector and throw in your lot - and your girl friend&039;s - with a bunch of nuts, just to attend a dog&039;s funeral"

They alking at the tail end of the procession, well behind the cot borne between Clarence Dodd and Wojtowicz

Paul had to chuckle "You&039;re frank about it," he said "Margo&039;s not h - I &039;s all on my side We&039;re really just friends"

Rama Joan looked at him shrewdly "So? A man can waste his life on friendship, Paul"

Paul nodded unhappily "Margo&039;s told etto keep other men away from her Except for Don, of course - and she thinks my interest in him is more than brotherly, even if I don&039;t know it"

Raed "Could be, I suppose The set-up of you and Margo and Don does seem unnatural"

"No, it&039;s perfectly natural in its way," he assured her with a kind of glooh school and college together We were interested in science and things We ineer and a spaceman, while I took the turn into journaliso into art

But ere deterot into the Moon Project, we o had decided she liked him a little better than she did me - or loved hiot engaged So that was settled - arrangements Then Don went to the moon We stayed on Earth That&039;s all there is to it, until this evening, when I seem to have thrown in with you people"

"Maybe because you had an explosion overdue Well, I can tell you why I&039;m here," the red-blonde wo executive&039;s wife: Ann going to a fancy school,in an occasional lecture on mysticis out a tiny inherited inco up the mysticism with all sorts of carnival hoku laugh " &039;Masculine protest&039;, my friends said &039;No, just human protest&039;, I told thes I really s that were mine alone I wanted Ann to have a real mother, not just a well-dressed statistic"

"But do you really ather - that sort of thing?"

"I don&039;t believe them as much as I&039;d like to, but I do believe them as much as I can," she told hiusto and color, at least you&039;re an individual And even if you fake it a bit, it&039;s still you, and if you keep trying you may some day come out with a bit of the truth - like Charlie Fulby did, when he told us he knew about his wild planets not by flying-saucer trips, as he&039;d always claimed, but by pure intuition"

"He&039;s paranoid," Paulahead at the Raht and the thin woman to his left "Are those tomen his disciples, or patrons, or what?"

"I&039;m sure he is somewhat paranoid," Rama Joan said, "but you surely don&039;t believe, do you, Paul, that sane people have a monopoly of the truth? No, I think they&039;re his wives - he grew up in a co, don&039;t you?"

"Not really," he protested "Though there&039;s so with the reed "Well, cheer up - the majority and the nuts spendbasic needs We&039;re all going back to the pavilion on the beach simply because we think there&039;ll be coffee and sandwiches"

At the head of the procession, Hunter was telling Margo Gelhorn very -saucer ical project," he confessed to her "I went to all kinds: the way-out contactees like Charlie Fulby, the sober-minded ones, and the in-between-ers and freewheelers, like this group I wanted to analyze a social syndrome and write a few papers on it But after a while I had to ad because I was hooked"

"Why, Professor Hunter?" Margo asked, hugging Miaow to her She was cold without her jacket, and the cat was like a hot water bottle "Does sauceringa beard?"

"Call h I suppose vanity plays a part" He touched his beard "No, it was si to follow and be excited about, so to be disinterestedly interested in - and that&039;s not so common any more in our ive-yourself-away yet sell-yourself-to-everybody society It got so I wanted to make a contribution ofand panel bits Now I do al pianos - he&039;s a whiz at that - so he can divide the rest of his ti it up"

"But Doc&039;s a bachelor, while I believe you io pointed out with faint malice

"Oh yes," Hunter conceded a bit wearily "Up in Portland there&039;s a Mrs Hunter and two boys who think Daddy spends altogether toothe very few papers he&039;s got out of it and the nothing it&039;s done for his acadeht now, they&039;re sitting up asking why Daddy wasn&039;t hoed and saucers came true" - but just then he realized they&039;d reached the boarded-up beach house and the old dance floor There was the green lantern, he saw, still burning, and beside it a chair with a little stack of unused prograh with the first rows ed (ould Doddsy ever reclaim the deposit they&039;d made on them at the Polish funeral parlor in Oxnard?) - and there was a coat sootten laid over one of the chairs, and there was the panelists&039; long table and under it some cardboard boxes they&039;d left in their hurry And thrust deep into the sand nearby there was even the big furled umbrella Doc had used as part of a crude astrolabe when first checking the s standing out against the purple-gold-speckled, spectrally cale of affection and nostalgia and relief, and he suddenly realized why, after being rebuffed by a landslide and a steel ed back to this spot

It was simply that it was hoether in security and where they&039;d witnessed the change in the heavens, and that each of theht be the last home any of them would ever have

Without haste Wanda and the thin wo Harry McHeath made for the boxes under the table

Wojtowicz and the Little Man set down the cot with Ragnarok on it, half shrouded by Margo&039;s jacket

Wojtowicz looked around, then pointed at the umbrella and said in a firht spot - that is, if you wouldn&039;t mind?" he added to Doc, who&039;d walked silently all the way fro Two beside the Little Man

"No, I&039;d be proud," Doc answered gruffly

They lugged the cot up, and Doc recovered his umbrella Then Wojtowicz took a flat-bladed spade fro

The fat woman noticed and called down fro in my side all the way"

Wojtowicz paused to call out: "You should just be daht you was having a heart attack"

Wanda called back angrily: "Look, when I have a heart attack, it&039;s bad - and there&039;s no thinking about it! But when my heart attack&039;s over, it&039;s over"

"OK," Wojtowicz told her over his shoulder

The spadeThe thin woman and Harry McHeath wiped sand from some cups and set the from behind the Wanderer, which seemed to tip over as it sank toward the Pacific

Luna looked visibly conical - es of "seas" on her face, there was the faintest tracery of shadow-lines, here and there palely flashing the Wanderer&039;s colors The effect was horrid, sos

A forceps birth, the Rain, fecundated by Ispan, bears herself in pain - and ht of that

Margo thought, I&039;m sorry I called her a bitch Don

Ra irl now, Paul"

Wojtowicz straightened up "That&039;s all the deep we can have it," he told the Little Man huskily "Any further we&039;d get water"

They turned toward the cot Clarence Dodd unsnapped the leash fronarok&039;s body, looking at Margo, but she shook her head, and he griain He and Wojtowicz and Doc let down the shrouded dog into his shallow grave Miaow lifted in Margo&039;s ar as strangely as if the blind spot had acquired ient moon was ht, so that the face the orb showed had beco impression, with the two thick eastern arreat eastern yellow spot, was of the head of a purple beast with jaws agape

Fenris Wolf, thought Harry McHeath And now it looks like it&039;s really eating thearound in front between its jaws

"It looks like a big dog getting ready to snap," Ann said thoughtfully "Monarok up there, like they used to put Greek heroes and nymphs up in the stars?"