unrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.

* * * * *

Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.

"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."

"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.

"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."

McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.

"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.

"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."

McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.

"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."

"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.

"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"

"What good woul