* * *
Clarence looked up and saw the Sun. It looked as if it was bearing down on him and he began to look frightened and turned his face away. He winced as the pain shot from his left ear across his face to his right shoulder. The people around him were strangely dressed and someone bent over him and placed a pillow under his head. They moved away and he saw poles pointing into the air; they seemed to go up and up. Through the pain in his head he was thinking that another project was in hand to build a platform high under the moon’s filmy protection and then another idea struck him. Perhaps they were going to build different layers so the moon’s surface would be the ground level. He couldn’t quite fathom it all out as five miles up was the height of the film. That would mean they would have to build many layers which would take many, many years to complete and it would be too late to save those left on Mother Earth. He thought of his family perishing under the heat of the sun and the maniacs out of control walking round the thoroughfares looking for someone to kill. He started to cry and yelled out his wife’s name, ‘SHERENE!’
Someone knelt beside him and held his hand. He looked and saw it was a lady, but not his Sherene. She patted the back of his hand offering words of comfort. ‘Lie still, help is on the way. You fell from a great height.’ Clarence tried to raise his head, but the pain was too bad. The lady pressed both her hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently back.
Two men arrived and examined Clarence and one placed a harness on his head and neck. He couldn’t move. The other man gave him an injection and the pain in his head went as if by magic. He felt himself being lifted. Just a few steps and he saw that he was being placed in a vehicle of some sort and he remembered his great grandfather relating stories of old about what the early vehicles were like and Clarence felt sure that this was one of those. He heard the wail of a siren and he felt certain that it was a vehicle that they, whoever they were, were using from a Museum.
The vehicle stopped and he heard a rush of people. They gathered round the trolley which seemed to have extended upwards and he was rushed at great speed along corridors with bright shining lights at different intervals and through another door where the light was so bright that Clarence tried to raise an arm to protect himself from what he thought was the Sun bearing down on him.
His last thoughts were, did I fall five miles and still be alive and then remembered the moon had no gravitation pull, so why was he in so much discomfort.
* * *
Clarence stirred from his slumber. He had slept a whole day and night. He blinked as he took in the scene. All these people rushing about dressed in funny looking clothes, the women looked funnier with strange looking head gear and the men in white overcoats with a Water Diviner slung around their necks. One of these water diviner creatures came up to Clarence and said ‘You’re lucky to be alive!’ The funny man with the white overcoat issued a garble message to the woman with a strange looking hat and departed. The woman gave him some tablets and then an injection. Clarence fell asleep.
It was the next day when Clarence eventually came out of his woolly dreams and there beside him in chairs were Sherene and his two children. His wife got up and kissed him. He seemed to be brighter and fully aware of where he was and thoughts of being on the moon dispelled when the doctor mentioned that Clarence had fallen off the scaffolding around the property where he was preparing the wood for painting. Using a blowlamp caused fumes to make Clarence suffer a black out and unable to steady himself. He had placed a hand on a moveable piece of wood and fell two storeys and sustained a brain and shoulder injury. Sherene had a worried look on her face but the doctor assured her he would be okay after a few weeks.
The firm that Clarence works for is called “Planet Earth Construction, Moon & Son.”
