She is assigned a young guide named Holly, a 15-year-old girl and aspiring starship designer who is the first-person narrator.
Holly swoops down and saves her life, breaking both arms in the process as she cushions Ariel's fall.
[citation needed] It effectively contrasts a traditional teenage romance story against realistically drawn details of everyday life as a colonist on the Moon.
"The Man Who Sold the Moon" sets the basis for lunar exploration and development in Heinlein's Future History.
Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction called "The Menace from Earth" a "startler", praising it as a Ladies Home Journal story "set in a wildly imaginative alien environment".