Ime no more than sixty-five thousand miles from the Moon's surface. The _Planetara_ presently would swing upon her direct course for Mars. There was nothing which could cause passenger comment in this close passing of the Moon; normally we used the satellite's attraction to give us additional starting speed. It was now or never that a message would come from Grantline. He was supposed to be upon the Earthward side of the Moon. While Snap had rushed through with his routine, I searched the Moon's surface with our glass. But there was nothing. Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights of the lunar mountains, the depths of the barren, empty seas were etched black and white, clear and clean. Grim, forbidding desolation, this unchanging Moon. In romance, moonlight may shimmer and sparkle to light a lover's smile; but the reality of the Moon is cold and bleak. There was nothing to show my prying eyes where the intrepid Grantline might be. "Nothing at all, Snap." And Snap's instruments, attuned for an hour now to pick up the faintest signal, were motionless. "If he has concentrated any appreciable amount of ore," said Snap. "We should get an impulse from its rays." But our receiving shield was dark, untouched. Our mirror grid gave the magnified images; the spectro, with its wave length selection, pictured the mountain levels and slowly descended into the deepest seas. There was nothing. Yet in those Moon caverns--a million million recesses amid the crags of that tumbled, barren surface--the pin point of movement which might have been Grantline's expedition cou