noon
Tod Denver swore nobly and fluently , set the controls on automatic-neutral and tried to localize the damage . But for Charley and his overloaded peeve , they would have been in Crystal City inside the hour . So it was Charley 's fault , of course ; all of it ... * * * * * It was beyond mere prank . Denver calculated grimly that his isolated suit would hold up less than twenty minutes in that noon inferno outside before the stats fused and the suiting melted and ran off him in droplets of metal foil and glass cloth . The thermal adjustors were already working at capacity , transmitting the light and heat that filtered through the mirror-tone hull into stored , useful energy . Batteries were already overcharged and the voltage regulators snapped on and off like a crackling barrage of distant heat-guns . Below was a high gulch of the Lunar Appenines , a pattern of dazzling glare and harsh moonshadows .