（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Moon.doc

Moon Larry Niven What would you do if this were your last night on earth? I I was watching the news when the change came, like a flicker of motion at the corner of my eye. I turned toward the balcony window. Whatever it was, I was too late to catch it. The moon was very bright tonight. I saw that, and smiled, and turned back. Johnny Carson was just starting his monologue. When the first commercials came on I got up to reheat some coffee. Commercials came in strings of three and four, going on midnight. Id have time. The moonlight caught me coming back. If it had been bright before, it was brighter now. Hypnotic. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. The balcony wasnt much more than a railed ledge, with standing room for a man and a woman and a portable barbecue set. These past months the view had been lovely, especially around sunset. The Power and Light Company had been putting up a glass-slab style office building. So far it was only a steel framework of open girders. Shadow-blackened against a red sunset sky, it tended to look stark and surrealistic and hellishly impressive. Tonight?.?.?. I had never seen the moon so bright, not even in the desert. Bright enough to read by, I thought, and immediately, but thats an illusion. The moon was never bigger (I had read somewhere) than a quarter held nine feet away. It couldnt possibly be bright enough to read by. It was only three-quarters full! But, glowing high over the San Diego Freeway to the west, the moon seemed to dim even the streaming automobile headlights. I blinked against its light, and thought of men walking on the moon, leaving corrugated footprints. Once, for the sake of an article I was writing, I had been allowed to pick up a bone-dry moon rock and hold it in my hand?.?.?.. I heard the show starting again, and I stepped inside. But, glancing once behind me, I caught the moon growing even brighter -- as if it had come from behind a wisp of scudding cloud. Now its light was brai