Authentic Science Fiction, December 1951 — page 59: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MOON IS HEAVEN 57 times he takes a slam at it with his hammer, picks up some of the resulting fragments and pops them in his bag. The whole thing looks like a Nature ramble. Above you the sky is jet black and peppered with eyes that stare at you boldly, unwinking, as if asking what are you doing here. You stare back at them and tell them silently that -you’ve as much right to be there as they have, since you are part of the same scheme as they are and are following through your destiny just as they are. Then you think this is getting a bit too theatrical and turn away. The Earth is still up there, only with a different face now. It’s been turning all the while you were asleep. Rolling round just the way it’s been doing for millions of years. That’s the theme of it, the thing that gets you. Once, long ago when you went down to Cornwall for a holiday and stood in a cave at the foot of the towering cliffs, you felt how long these rocks had stood there, unchanged, unchanging while men went about their silly tasks and troubles. It’s the same up here only more so. More dramatic, more overpowering. All this is bigger than the Cornish cliffs. Older, too, probably, And all that time, it’s been looking down on the turning Earth, remote and lifeless while nations and cultures rose and fell. Until a few men }ooked up at its pale radiance and let an idea take fire within them. Until they’d thought and worked and badgered people and raised money and worked more and thought more and finally worked it out and made the thing that would take them up and let them down in the midst of that radiance that wasn’t pale any more. From now on, you think, irrevocably, the face of the Moon will be changed. Its own changes will look down on the changes below and it will be left to Mars or Mercury to keep the changeless vigil. And in time, of course, their turn would come, Until at last the very outermost planet would come under man’s reaching hand. And so on. Beyond the Solar System. Beyond the Galaxy. Out to the place where Einstein says space curves back on comicbooks.com