in W.C.U , too , reference to the evil in that system would be avoided like the plague in public debate . mutually-sustaining opposites &amp;hellip; . Realtor &apos;s measure , being lost anyway , since the Mocrats were in a minority , was not pressed to a vote ; and it was a relief for the Senate to turn from these remote and academic matters to the next item on the agenda , a practical fug measure to spyproof the membrane and expand . Harry did not know what this meant and , as in Casino Ronde , had the Cherokee Indian feeling . he decided to slip down to the canteen for a cup of coffee . what &apos;s happening aloft ? drawled a journalist , his elbows sprawling over the canteen table , his pencil doodling among his shorthand notes . this motion to spy-proof the membrane , what does it mean ? have n&apos;t you heard ? the fugs , especially , are scared by reports that W.C.U spies are being shot through the membrane in capsules . they could guide missiles onto back-face targets which are now safe . he picked his teeth . in the mountains they &apos;ve found little capsules , this big - he brandished a teaspoon - with hundreds of tiny little red men inside them . is n&apos;t it a bit far-fetched ? said Harry , recalling what Lilipendi had said , about the Mos being as credulous as Africans . if you ask me , the capsules and the red midgets inside them come out of one of Moke &apos;s toy factories . Moke - Moke Blenkinsop you mean ? would n&apos;t it make sense ? traditionally second coming is associated with Daggitt &apos;s , the membrane people , and has put more money into it lately . coincidence ? if spy-proofing becomes statutory , it &apos;ll mean a complete 360 degree new trap in the membrane . will it become statutory ? Realtor and his Mocrats will be against it , but Moke licked them even when they were in power , though only just . is n&apos;t Mike Renshaw a match for Moke ? though leader of the anti-presidentials , Renshaw was known to be left of centre , so by no means uncritical of big business . Renshaw &apos;s ulcers are bad this month . he &apos;s away resting and playing clock-golf ; and the end of next week , you know , the Bowery President is coming over and they &apos;ll have a lot to talk about - a sly reference to the long break in Mo-American affairs occasioned by the Panama affair . the Mos had refused to deal with Marjoribanks , but had just agreed to receive his successor , President Scribner . so that &apos;s why Moke gets the right-wing A.P.&apos;s to bring in the spy-proofing now ? I &apos;m not saying so , but the journalist winked knowingly , though probably he did n&apos;t know any more than Harry whether real knowledge , rather than prejudice , or possibly just the policy of his paper , lay behind that wink . and not for the first or last time the American felt the Moon as an outsize social organism which is still primitive in that it has not yet grown sufficient nervous system to be aware of its own internal motions , far less of their outward repercussions . but this place is n&apos;t really a political centre if financier Moke secretly inspires it , he said , thinking of those stories he had read as a boy . I &apos;m not saying so . but why should n&apos;t you if it &apos;s true ? have n&apos;t you free speech on Moon ? of course we &apos;ve got free speech ; and we &apos;ll smash in the face of anyone who says that we have n&apos;t ! . 20 . but during these real days in Aristotle Harry was not merely dabbling in mighty Mo matters perhaps beyond the understanding of a sub outsider : he was also carrying out his commitments to Mr Halliday , and Uncle Sam , by revising his stories . energy had returned with the Sun . also the economic equilibrium which he had had in Plato , before the interruption of the real nights . he determined to spend the next series of them here in Aristotle , where the pace was less than in Plato , almost reminding him of sleepy sub towns like Philadelphia and Chicago . then he would go back to Plato for a final spell of real days and would return to New York in late January or early February . Angelina might be a little sorry if we were not back for Christmas as arranged , but he consoled himself by thinking that he and Angelina would have plenty of time together in the future . and heaven alone knew when , if ever , he would be back on Moon again , and able to do research at first hand into matters on which the future of everyone , including Angelina , depended &amp;hellip; . the recovery of his balance was due to the fact that he was living , virtually without expenses , with the people to whom Moke had sent him : little people who regarded him as lucky to have descended from such economic altitudes . Tom Dreyfus had a job on the machines in the secretariat ( stamp department ) while Sally sulked at home . they had been married for six years , but the salary raise , on the expectation of which they had done so , had not materialised . do you know , I had to send back our bedroom furniture in the second year , she moaned . she had contacts in political circles , a schoolfriend of hers having married Lester Peron , a Mocrat Senator with a seat on the ( literally ) all-powerful rocket release board . sometimes she took Harry around with her , but never her husband , a fact he accepted as inevitable . I guess Sally made a mistake about me , he said one evening , when he had been left to cook his own meal . all Sally &apos;s relations were makrodeb now , but Tom was a static Mib , the middle-income-bracket equivalent to sub-lil on the lower . the economic shock had unmanned him and Harry , seeing his host busy among soft foods in the kitchen , felt that the poor fellow was , understandably , changing sex . so a happy week passed , and it was a lunar noon , and the dark earth was fringed with the wedding ring effect , when eventually Sally Dreyfus took Harry to see the Lester Perons . all Aristotle was excited at the time , not by the prospect of the U.S President &apos;s visit , but by a great storm in the photosphere of the sun . a matter which on earth would hardly penetrate beyond the minds of astronomers was of general interest to the Mos , doubtless because their habitat is not submerged beneath a deep natural atmosphere . one wondered if this greater awareness of the physical cosmos might with time instil the reverence which , on earth , nature inspires , especially when one reflected that the rockets over which Mr Peron &apos;s board presided had it in their power permanently to warp the solar system . true enough , such ultimate weapons had not been used in the last few wars , but it seemed very probable that they would be in the next one , Moon and her allies being more inferior than formerly to W.C.U in the weapons pronounced conventional . Lester was not home yet from his formidable duties and his wife , in the manner of middle-brow wives , romanced about him in his absence . Lester was a country lawyer , and we were very small microdebs , were n&apos;t we , Sally - here she had dropped her voice in homage to the economic system : that was reverenced - when he thought we might get go a bit better if he entered politics . know how he did it ? he &apos;s clever on the mouth-organ . so when he visited some craterlet on Face ( ours is an agricultural back-face area ) the cry would go up , as soon as he had spoken a few sentences of his speech : cut the politics , Lester , give us something on your mouth-organ . that &apos;s how he got the votes , that &apos;s how we came through to makrodeb status and got all these lovely things - she waved a plump hand towards her grand pianos , etc : at the same time a door banged - but do n&apos;t say a word about it , Lester wants his mouth-organ to be forgotten now . the time has come for him to be taken seriously as a statesman . Peron entered , a large man , who had once been handsome but was now seedy-looking , a sufferer from stomach-ulcers . in the back-face tradition he wore , and kept on indoors , a fifty gallon hat . Harry was prepared for something unpleasant , for this was the Senator who had annoyed the United States by bragging how he had once won a trick from W.C.U by threatening to loose off one of his rockets ( an admission which would scarcely help bluff to succeed the next time ) and , lately , by saying that if Mo land-troops had to come to the aid of the O.G.O contingent in the Panama region , no Mo dough-boy will want to have an American G.I fighting alongside him . but privately he turned out to be as friendly as Mr Wise the tube manufacturer , to have the same adolescent openness and freshness , though perhaps not the same maturity . one remembered that he was a lawyer by training , and suspected that the points he made so sharply in international politics were as abstract to him as those a lawyer makes in a court of law . the motive would be the same in both cases , to serve this home of his , in which his heart lay . here the rocket man &apos;s charm was disarming . yet when the time came to leave , Harry felt as depressed as when he left Mrs Halliday &apos;s office , exactly a month ago . if even Mo statesmen only did what they had to do to get go on an expanding scale , and left the sum-total of their actions , and their lunar and earthly repercussions , to luck ( or to Moke ) , there was a vacuum where there should be a centre of trust , responsible for the maintenance and expansion of free society . the political life of Aristotle looked more and more like a masquerade of business interests in disguise which , far from attracting the allegiance of free men everywhere , could only repel them . then what of the cultural life ? did this perhaps nurture a genuinely civilizing impulse which might in time become social fact and counteract the obsession with economics which had grown up during the Moon &apos;s first two centuries ? Harry borrowed Sally Dreyfus &apos; car and drove out to Eudoxus University to see the famous rodeos which take place at the end of the advent term , one more of those Mo traditions which look so suspect to the American visitor . in the cold gas and harsh sunshine of the December afternoon , last year students revolved in interlocking circles on the vast , round campus . at the centre of each circle stood personnel managers of corporations , together with professors and their filing clerks . the students had bought their college education forward and were now being bought forward in their turn . by comparing personal appearances with university records , the agents of the businesses would pick on young men and women who interested them , and contracts would be initialled at the end of the parade . but since starting salaries would depend on grade A or B in the finals next May , and since mating prospects would depend upon salaries , scholarship for these fine young people was closely geared to economic and biological ends which , essentially , were really means . so , seeing them revolve in circles , Harry had the feeling that Moke ( or what Moke consciously or unconsciously symbolised , anyway in Harry &apos;s mind ) had these splendid young people by the short hairs , and was diverting them from true life . stepping out in their white shorts , they looked glad enough to be diverted , however , with the single exception of one worried little man-student who kept getting out of step . he looked as if nothing Moke and his minions could do to him would ever make him go ; but the reason probably lay in elementary neurosis and not in some eruption from those deeper layers in the human psyche which are trans-economic . so once again the metaphysics were depressing , and in absolute contrast to the physical display . Mos have an un-American love of parades , and these young ones , on parade for jobs which they had to get to pay off their college bills , were naturally putting their best foot forward . 