Shipwreck in the Sky Page 2

Thank you, sir. But stopapologizing, will you? I know you haven't got any duplicates of the VX-3ready, no rescue rocket...."

  Dan listened a moment longer then broke in roughly. "Oh, for Pete'ssake, will you stop crying over me, sir? So I get mine here. I mighthave gotten it over Berlin, too. Forget it--sir."

  Dan grinned suddenly. "Look, what have I got to kick about? I'll go outin a flash of glory--at least one headline will put it that way--andI'll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered thatEarth has _two_ moons! What more could I ask, really?"

  Dan blushed at the reply from Rough Rock. "Will you lay off please,Colonel? How else should a man take it? I'm still scared silly inside.But, look, I've really got something to report now. This little runtmoon makes tracks around Earth in probably two hours minus. If Iremember my Spacenautics right I'm already looking down over the GrandCanyon, heading west. I'm going to get a pretty terrific bird's-eye viewof the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how muchoxygen I've got left.... Lucky, eh?"

  Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of theEarth below him. His little moonlet did not rotate, or rather it rotatedonce for each revolution around Earth, as the Moon did, keeping one faceearthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The Sierras on Earth hoveinto clear view and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, thenJapan, Asia, Europe.... No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It wouldbe across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the South Pole, thenup around over the top of the world past Greenland, following that greatcircle around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip aroundthe world ever made by man!

  "Before we're out of mutual range, Rough Rock, I'm going to explore thisnew moon. Me and Columbus! Stand by for reports."

  Dan did his walking in huge leaps that propelled him fifty feet at astep with slight effort, due to the extremely feeble gravity of the tinybody. What did he weigh here? Probably no more than an ounce or two.

  "Nothing much to report, Colonel. It's a dead, airless pip-squeakplanetoid, just a big mile-thick rock, probably. No life, no vegetation,no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the Man in the SecondMoon--and the joke's on me! Well, one and three-quarter hours of oxygenleft, by the gauge, or 105 minutes--sounds like more that way.... What'sthat, sir? Your voice is getting faint. Any last requests from me? Well,one favor maybe. Pick up my body some day with another rocket.... Yeah,it'll stay preserved up here in this deep-freeze of space.... Thanks,sir.... Can't hear you much now. Going out of range. Give Betty myfondest. You know, the blonde.... Well, sir--goodbye now."

  Dan was glad that Rough Rock's radio voice faded to a whisperynothingness. It wasn't easy to stay casual now. There was nothing moreto say, really, and he didn't want to hear any more crying from the CO.The Old Man had sounded almost hysterical. He wanted just to be alonewith his thoughts now, making his final peace with the universe....

  He checked the gauge with his watch--ninety minutes of oxygen to zero.Or, he thought with a grin, eternity minus ninety minutes.

  He was beginning to have trouble breathing. But it was awesomely grand,watching the sweep of Earth beneath him, the procession of dots thatwere islands strung across the Pacific South Seas like a necklace ofgreen beads. He was still within radio range of ships below at sea. Yethe didn't contact them. He had nothing to say, like a ghost in the sky.

  Idly, he kept pitching loose stones, watching their rifle-like speedaway from him. Again a phenomenon of the weak gravity of the moonlet.Actually, he was able to pick up a boulder ten feet across and heave itaway with ease. _We who are about to die amuse ourselves_, he thought.Then, because a thread of stubborn hope still clung in a corner of hismind, he got an idea. It had lurked just beyond his mental grasp forsome time now. Something significant....

  Abruptly, face alight, Dan switched on his radio and contacted a shipbelow, asking them to relay him to Rough Rock with their more powerfultransmitter.

  "Ahoy, Rough Rock! Stop adding up my insurance, Colonel! I'm comingback.... No, sir, I haven't gone out of my head, sir. It's so simpleit's a laugh, sir.... See you in a few hours, sir!"

  And he did.

  Dan grinned when they hauled his dripping form from the sea. Aboard thesearch plane they cut him out of the space suit to which was stillattached his emergency twin parachute. But his helmet was gone, rippedloose, for Dan had been breathing fresh Earth air during the longparachute descent.

  They stared at him as at a dead man come alive.

  "Impossible to escape?" He chuckled, repeating their babble. "That'swhat _I_ thought too, until I remembered those data tables on gravityand Escape Velocity and such--how, on the Moon, the Escape Velocity ismuch less than on Earth. And on that tiny second moon--well, my clue waswhen I threw a stone into the air _and it never came back_."

  Dan gulped hot coffee.

  "I got off the moonlet myself then, got up to more than a mile above itwhere I was free of its feeble gravity. But I was still in the sameorbit circling Earth. I'd have continued revolving as a human satelliteforever, of course, but for this emergency gadget hooked to my belt."

  Dan held up the metal gun with its empty tank and needle-nose halfburned away.

  "Reaction pistol. Fires hydrazine and oxidizer, ordinary jet-rocketprinciple. Aiming it toward the stars, opposite earth, its reactiveblasts shoved me Earthward, thanks to Newton. I needed a speed of aboutone-half mile a second. The powerful little jet gun had only my smallmass to shove in free space, without gravity or friction. That broke mefrom free-fall _around_ Earth to gravity-fall _toward_ Earth.

  "Then I spiraled down under gravity pull. I reached lung-filling airdensity just in time, before my oxygen gave out. One more danger wasthat I began heating up like a meteor due to air friction. I flung out aprayer first, followed by my twin parachutes, designed for extremeinitial shock. They held. Slowed me to a paratrooper's drift the rest ofthe way down."

  "Wait," a puzzled pilot objected. "Your story doesn't hang together._How_ did you get off that moonlet? How did you get up there, a mileabove it, away from its gravity? There was nobody to throw _you_, like astone."

  "I threw myself," said Dan. "First I ran as fast as I could, maybehalfway around that moonlet, to get a good running start. And then--"

  Dan Barstow's grin then was undoubtedly the biggest grin in history....

  "Well, then, since the feeble gravity couldn't pull me back again, whatI really did was to _jump clear off that moon_."

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.