The Merchandise Guide
Annual 1975

Domed areas with artifi- cial sunlight exist where vegetable crops--the green stuff so important to human life--are grown. Coupled with artificial vitamin pro- ducts, these keep the Moon- base people properly healthy, until--as they all hope--they find their new planet and take up a new and more normal life that doesn't have quite so much of man-made science as its background.    As for water, that, too is produced by chemical means --the sparking of hydrogen in atmospheres of oxygen. And even the air that the people breathe is thanks to the technology of the scien- tists who first made Moon- base possible. A constant re-purification system ex- tracts all the carbon dioxide and regenerates life-giving oxygen.    So the Moon--broken though it is from the grip of Earth's gravity, and travel- ling perhaps endlessly through space--could con- ceivably support its people more or less for ever. A constant re-use of materials, a regenerative nuclear sys- tem, heat and light for always . . . all serve to pro- vide an eternity of amenable surroundings for the lost three hundred.    There are gymnasiums to keep them fit. Games rooms to keep them occupied. Sports facilities to satisfy anyone. Solariums where they can even get a tan!    But it is all artificial. Man made. There can be no real rest in the minds of the castaways until they have found their new home.    Until then, for all their perfection of surroundings, they are still prisoners. On their erratic lump of way- ward matter once known as The Moon . . .

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