The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moon is Green, by Fritz Reuter Leiber

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Title: The Moon is Green

Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber

Illustrator: David Stone

Release Date: August 10, 2009 [EBook #29662]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_THE MOON
IS GREEN_

By FRITZ LEIBER

Illustrated by DAVID STONE

_Anybody who wanted to escape death could, by
paying a very simple price--denial of life!_

"Effie! What the devil are you up to?"

Her husband's voice, chopping through her mood of terrified rapture,
made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminine
self-control her body did not show a tremor.

_Dear God_, she thought, _he mustn't see it. It's so beautiful, and he
always kills beauty._

"I'm just looking at the Moon," she said listlessly. "It's green."

_Mustn't, mustn't see it._ And now, with luck, he wouldn't. For the
face, as if it also heard and sensed the menace in the voice, was
moving back from the window's glow into the outside dark, but slowly,
reluctantly, and still faunlike, pleading, cajoling, tempting, and
incredibly beautiful.

"Close the shutters at once, you little fool, and come away from the
window!"

"Green as a beer bottle," she went on dreamily, "green as emeralds,
green as leaves with sunshine striking through them and green grass to
lie on." She couldn't help saying those last words. They were her token
to the face, even though it couldn't hear.

"Effie!"

She knew what that last tone meant. Wearily she swung shut the ponderous
lead inner shutters and drove home the heavy bolts. That hurt her
fingers; it always did, but he mustn't know that.

"You know that those shutters are not to be touched! Not for five more
years at least!"

"I only wanted to look at the Moon," she said, turning around, and then
it was all gone--the face, the night, the Moon, the magic--and she was
back in the grubby, stale little hole, facing an angry, stale little
man. It was then that the eternal thu