The elevator moved downward slowly. They were the only ones on board.

The Earthman said, “I suspect this isn’t much used.”

Selene smiled again. “You’re right. The hold-chute is much more popular, and much more fun.”

“What is it?”

“Exactly what the name implies.... Here we are. We only had to drop two levels.... It’s just a vertical tube you can drop through, with handholds. We don’t encourage Earthies to use it.”

“Too risky?”

“Not in itself. You can climb down as though it were a ladder. However, there are always youngsters swinging down at considerable speed and Earthies don’t know how to keep out of the way. Collisions are always discomforting. But you’ll get to use it in time.... In fact, what you’ll see now is a kind of large hold-chute designed for recklessness.”

She led him to a circular railing around which a number of individuals were leaning and talking. All were more or less in the nude. Sandals were common and usually a hip-purse was slung over one shoulder. Some wore briefs. One was scooping a greenish-mash out of a container and was eating it.

The Earthman wrinkled his nose slightly as he passed that one. He said, “The dental problem must be severe on the Moon.”

“It isn’t good,” Selene agreed. “If we ever get the chance, we’ll select for an edentate jaw.”

“Toothlessness?”

“Maybe not entirely. We might keep the incisors and canines for cosmetic reasons and for occasionally useful tasks. They’re easily cleaned, too. But why should we want useless molars? It’s just a hangover from an Earthie past.”

“Are you making any progress in that direction?”

“No,” she said, stiffly. “Genetic engineering is illegal. Earth insists.”

She was leaning over the railing. “They call this the Moon’s playground,” she said.

The Earthman looked down. It was a large cylindrical opening with pink smooth walls to which metal bars were attached in what seemed a random configuration. Here and there, a bar stretched across a portion of the cylinder, sometimes across its entire width. It was perhaps four or five hundred feet deep and about fifty feet across.

No one seemed to be paying particular attention either to the playground or to the Earthman. Some had looked at him indifferently as he passed, seeming to weigh his clothed state, his facial appearance, and then had turned away. Some made a casual hand gesture to Selene’s direction before turning away, but all turned away. The no-interest signal, however subdued, could not have been more blatant.

The Earthman turned to the cylindrical opening. There were slim figures at the bottom, foreshortened because they were seen from above. Some wore wisps of clothing in red, some in blue. Two teams, he decided. Clearly the wisps served protective functions, since all wore gloves and sandals, protective bands about knees and elbows. Some wore brief bands about the hips, some about the chests.

“Oh,” he muttered. “Men and women.”

Selene said, “Right! The sexes compete equally but the idea is to prevent the uncontrolled swinging of parts that might hamper the guided fall. There’s a sexual difference there which also involves vulnerability to pain. It’s not modesty.”

The Earthman said, “I think I’ve read of this.”

“You may have,” said Selene, indifferently. “Not much seems to get out. Not that we have any objection, but the Terrestrial government prefers to keep news of the Moon to a minimum.”

“Why, Selene?”

“You’re an Earthman. You tell me.... Our theory here on the Moon is that we embarrass the Earth. Or at least the Earth government.”

On either side of the cylinder now, two individuals were rising rapidly and the patter of light drumbeats was heard in the background. At first, the climbers seemed to be going up a ladder, rung by rung, but their speed increased and by the time they were halfway up, they were striking each hold as they passed, making an ostentatious slapping noise.

“Couldn’t do that on Earth as gracefully,” said the Earthman, admiringly. “Or at all,” he amended.

“It’s not just low-gravity,” said Selene. “Try it, if you think so. This takes endless hours of practice.”

The climbers reached the railing and swung up to a headstand. They performed a simultaneous somersault and began to fall.

“They can move quickly when they want to,” said the Earthman.

“Umm,” said Selene, through the patter of applause. “I suspect that when Earthmen—I mean the real Earthmen, the ones who have never even visited the Moon—think of moving around the Moon, they think of the surface and of spacesuits. That’s often slow, of course. The mass, with the spacesuit added, is huge, which means high inertia and a small gravity to overcome it.”

“Quite right,” said the Earthman. “I’ve seen the classic motion pictures of the early astronauts that all school children see and the movements are like those underwater, The picture gets imprinted, even when we know better.”

“You’d be surprised how fast we can move on the surface these days, spacesuit and all,” said Selene. “And here, underground, without spacesuits, we can move as quickly as on Earth. The slower whip of gravity is made up for by the proper use of muscles.”

“But you can move slowly, too.” The Earthman was watching the acrobats. They had gone up with speed and were going down with deliberate slowness. They were floating, slapping the handholds to delay the drop rather than, as before, to accelerate the rise. They reached the ground and two others replaced them. And then two more.

And then two more. From each team alternately, pairs competed in virtuosity.

Each pair went up in unison; each pair rose and fell in a more complicated pattern. One pair kicked off simultaneously to cross the tube in a low parabola, convex upward, each reaching the handhold the other had abandoned, and somehow skimming past each other in mid-air without touching. That evoked louder applause.

The Earthman said, “I suspect I lack the experience to appreciate the finer points of skill. Are these all native Lunarites?”

“They have to be,” said Selene. “The gymnasium is open to all Lunar citizens and some immigrants are fairly good, considering. For this kind of virtuosity, however, you must depend on babies that are conceived and born here. They have the proper physical adaptation, at least more than native Earthmen have, and they get the proper childhood training. Most of these performers are under eighteen.”

“I imagine it’s dangerous, even at Moon-gravity levels.”

“Broken bones aren’t very uncommon. I don’t think there’s been an actual death, but there’s been at least one case of broken spine and paralysis. That was a terrible accident; I was actually watching— Oh, wait now; we’re going to have the ad libs now.”

“The what?”

“Till now, we’ve had set pieces. The climbs were according to a fixed pattern.”

The percussion beat seemed softer as one climber rose and suddenly launched into mid-air. He caught a transverse bar one-handed, circling it once vertically, and let go.

The Earthman watched closely. He said, “Amazing. He gets around those bars exactly like a gibbon.”

“A what?” asked Selene.

“A gibbon. A kind of ape; in fact, the only ape still existing in the wild. They—” He looked at Selene’s expression and said, “I don’t mean it as an insult, Selene; they are graceful creatures.”

Selene said, frowning, “I’ve seen pictures of apes.”

“You probably haven’t seen gibbons, in motion. ... I dare say that Earthies might call Lunarites ‘gibbons’ and mean it insultingly, about on the level of what you mean by ‘Earthie.’ But I don’t mean it so.”

He leaned both elbows on the railing and watched the movements. It was like dancing in the air. He said, “How do you treat Earth-immigrants here on the Moon, Selene? I mean immigrants who mean to stay here life-long. Since they lack true Lunarite abilities—”