Beverly Hall, age 11, of Newport News, Virginia, for her question:

Is there anything like quicksand on the moon?

This possibility was suggested in the early days of the space age. Probing spacecraft relayed back close up pictures of the lunar surface    and some places appeared to be covered with dusty ashes. Nobody could guess how deep these layers might be, or whether they could support the weight of an astronaut. When he took his first step, he just might sink down as he would in an earth type quicksand. However, later unmanned spacecraft landed and stood firm on the lunar landscape. Obviously the moon's surface was solid enough for men to stand and walk upon.

An earth type quicksand, of course, is a soupy mixture of water and sandy silt. But the moon has no water to create such a mixture. So if these suspected quicksands did exist on the moon, they would be dry ones. They might be basins, who knows how deep, filled with fine dust too light to support the weight of a man. Fortunately, the lunar astronauts found no such booby traps, though they reported that the super fine moon dust did have a tendency to stick to their space boots.