Free The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber Page A

the yellow area, moving toward the center, was almost like a fat crescent.
    Ann spoke up, "I think it's oceans of golden water and lands of thick purple forest."
    "No, young lady, you got to stick to the rules of the game," Doc admonished, leaning down toward her as he still strode on. "Which is that you can't have anything up there that you don't know about down here."
    "Is that your formula for approaching the unknown, Mr. Brecht?" Rama Joan asked with a suggestion of laughter. "Would it even work for Russia?"
    "Well, I myself think it's a darn good formula for approaching Russia," Doc replied.
    "Hey, young lady," he continued, speaking to Ann, "what's the best way of getting on the good side of your mother? I never wooed a Rama yet and the idea intrigues me."
    Ann shrugged, switching her red braids, and Rama Joan answered for her. "Don't begin by expecting to find only reflections of yourself," she said tartly. Suddenly she jerked off her turban, releasing a cloud of red-gold hair which at last made her seem plausible as Ann's mother, though rendering her male evening dress doubly incongruous.
    They were catching up with the others now, threading past the sea-grass. Paul was intrigued by the number who were walking with a permanent hunch away from the Wanderer, then realized that he was walking that way, too. They overtook the Ramrod and the two women with him, the thin one of them carrying the radio, which was now playing tinnily the Grieg A minor Concerto, sandwiched between thick static.
    "I tried other stations," the woman told Hunter, "but the static was even worse."
    Abruptly the music broke off. As one, they stopped, and several of the people ahead of them did, too.
    The radio said, quite clearly: "This is a Sigalert Bulletin. The Hollywood and Santa Monica Freeways—no, change that—the Hollywood, Santa Monica and Ventura Freeways are closed by congestion. Motorists are requested to use none of the freeways until further notice. Please stay home. The appearance in the sky is not an atomic attack.
    Repeat: not an atomic attack. We've just been talking over the phone with Professor Humason Kirk, noted Tarzana College astronomer, and he tells us that the appearance in the sky is unquestionably—get that, folks, unquestionably—an orbiting cloud of metallic powders reflecting sunlight. He tentatively identifies the powders as gold and roseate bronze. The total weight of the powders can be no more than a few pounds, Professor Kirk assures us, and they can't hurt—"
    "Oh, the stupid ass!" Doc broke in. "Powders! Puffballs!"
    Several people shushed him, but by the time they could listen again, there was only the sound of the piano rippling through A minor runs.
     
    Don Merriam figured he had to be within a hundred yards of the Hut when the second big moonquake came, a vertical one this time, but heralded by the same horrible grinding roar, as if Luna were tearing her guts out. His teeth stung and the metal of his suit vibrated fiercely, as if resonating a cosmic piano note.
    Solid moon dropped from under his boots, then smashed up against their corrugated soles, then dropped away and smashed again. The dust carpet fell and lifted with him. Here and there bushels of it shot up a dozen feet or more, then fell back, abruptly compared with dust on Earth.
    The jolts went on. Don fought to keep his footing as if he were standing on the back of a bucking horse, his hands ready to move to whichever side toward which he should overbalance. The jumping dust made bright vertical scrawls—thick, hairpin brushstrokes—against the starfields. Some solid sunlight was once more bathing Plato's plain.
    The jolts subsided. Don upped the polarization of his helmet window to four-fifths max and scanned for the Hut. He'd quit trying to raise them by suit radio. He couldn't make out the portholes, but that was always harder in sunlight. He figured the right direction from the stars and started out.He thought he saw the gleam-edged,