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where the pumps of the air-conditioning plant quickly sucked it away.
    ‘Well,’ he began, ‘it’s nice to see you all here. I’m sorry about the twins, but I couldn’t possibly wangle shipping space for them—and anyway they’re much too young.’
    ‘You haven’t told us, darling,’ said his wife (and there was an ominous look in her eye), ‘just why you couldn’t come down to Earth.’
    Professor Martin coughed nervously. ‘It’s really a most extraordinary coincidence. Two days before I was coming home something I’ve been waiting for all my life happened. We caught a supernova on the rise.’
    ‘That sounds awfully impressive. Exactly what does it mean?’
    ‘A supernova is a star that blows up in such a colossal explosion that it suddenly becomes hundreds of millions of times brighter. In fact, for a few days it shines with as much light as a whole universe. We don’t know what causes it—it’s one of the great unsolved problems of astronomy.
    ‘Anyway, this has just happened to a fairly near star, and by a terrific stroke of luck we spotted it in the early stages, before the explosion reached its peak. So we’ve got a wonderful series of observations, but we’ve all been working flat out for the last few days.
    ‘I’ve got things organised now, although it will be some weeks before we’ve finished. The nova is slowly dying down and we want to watch what happens as it returns to normal. At its brightest, by the way, it was so brilliant that even down on Earth you could see it in the middle of the day. I expect you heard about that on the radio.’
    ‘I do remember something,’ said Mrs Martin vaguely, ‘but I didn’t take much notice.’
    Profession Martin threw up his hands in mock despair. ‘Something that hasn’t happened for five hundred years—and you don’t notice! A whole sun, perhaps with all its planets, blows up in the most gigantic explosion ever recorded—and it hasn’t had the slightest effect on you!’
    ‘It certainly has,’ his wife retorted. ‘It’s upset all my holiday arrangements and made me go to the Moon instead of Majorca. But I don’t really mind, dear,’ she continued with a smile. ‘This certainly is a change.’
    Daphne had been listening to this conversation with a kind of fascinated horror. The picture of the exploding star—a whole sun, perhaps with inhabited worlds circling round it—was one she could not get out of her mind.
    ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘could this happen here?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, could our sun become—what did you call it?—a supernova? And if it did, what would happen to us? I suppose the Earth would melt.’
    ‘Melt! My goodness, it wouldn’t have time! There’d just be a puff of gas, and it would be gone! But don’t worry—the chances against it happening are millions and millions to one. Let’s talk about something more cheerful. We’ve got a dance on here tonight and I’d like you all to come to it.’
    ‘A dance? Here on the Moon?’
    ‘Why ever not? We try to live normal lives, with all the recreation we can get. We’ve a cinema, our own little orchestra, a very good drama group, sports clubs, and many other things to keep us happy when we’re off-duty. And we have a dance twice a day—at noon and midnight.’
    ‘ Twice a day?’ gasped Daphne. ‘How do you ever manage to do any work?’
    Professor Martin’s eyes twinkled. ‘I mean twice every lunar day,’ he replied. ‘Don’t forget that’s nearly a month of Earth time. It’s just before noon now, and the Sun won’t set for another seven days. But our clocks and calendars keep Earth-time, because human beings can’t sleep for two weeks and then work for another two without a break! It’s a bit confusing at first, but you soon get used to it.’
    He glanced at the clock set high in the opposite wall—a very complicated clock with several dials and three pairs of hands.
    ‘That reminds me,’ he said. ‘Time we went to the