each degree of returning consciousness, more and more capacity for fighting the fear. He cursed the fear and wrestled with it like a man with an invisible opponent down an endless flight of stairs.

He felt too alone, isolated; then he thought of the readings. They could be flashed into a small screen in the face-plate by manipulating the fingers of his right hand. He tried to concentrate on the readings as an aid in fighting the fear.

... in the stratosphere, eighty kilometers, rocket's temperature minus a hundred and fifty degrees. Hundred and twenty-five kilometers, lower part of ionosphere, up plus one hundred and fifty—and then on up where it was somewhere around a thousand degrees, and who cared? He was beyond that—away way out—somewhere—

It went on a long time and then ... nothing but darkness ... the lonely song of the gyroscopes. His own voice ... distant, alien ... raving ... a kind of delirium ... then sometime, an awareness of the cutting down of power, the brief warning of intuition, the concussion. And as consciousness came back again, the knowing that he had hit too hard in spite of the lighter moon gravity.

His head throbbing crazily and around him the absolute darkness and silence and the warm ache in his head, the dizziness and the warm stickiness flowing down his face.

He lay there, afraid of retching. He moved his finger to release more oxygen. He could smell himself, the sharp bite of fear and the odor of blood.

He felt panic. He experimented. He could move easily here where the seven-hundred pound suit weighed only 140 pounds. He switched on the suit's light beam. The anonymous man had said. "Get out of the rocket at once, silently!"

He squeezed out of the barrel, into the larger compartment. He got the compartment door open. Half blind by shock, he was out in the Lunar night. "When you get outside, stop right there. Read the instructions!"

He had a panicky desire to fall to his knees, cling to the rocket. He stood there stiffly. "It isn't fair," he whispered over and over. "I can't do it!"

Read the instructions.

lone, a man—one man—on the moon. No movement, no sound, no air, no life. Only sharp black and white contrast of lifeless shadow to accentuate the awful and final loneliness. Occasional meteors striking into the pumice dust—silently, voicing the stillness of his own terror.

He read the instructions. He hooked the capsule out of the kit, opened it. The suit's single light beaming like a Cyclopean eye.

The giant walls of Albategnius the center of the moon's visible disk towered bleakly up around ... everywhere ... lifelessness, just broken rock ... no water to erode. No voices, no faces, no life anywhere. Just Barlow. Barlow and a rocket.

And the stars and somewhere, the earth in the sky, sharp as molten steel in the eyes. The rocket watched him and listened. This was a target rocket. 240,000 miles away in the New Mexico blockhouse, they were watching through the rocket's eyes, feeling through the rocket's mechanical nervous system. The rocket carried instruments to test out flight calculations, controls, conditions on the moon. It carried self-operating information about the range of temperatures, radiation, gravitational influences and other conditions to be encountered on the journey and here on the moon's surface. It wouldn't return; only the results of its sensory apparatus were returning now and would keep on returning until the rocket's power ran out.

The rocket was equipped with every kind of instrument—trackers, telemeters, and it was sending back sound and sight like a human eye and ear. Radar stations, television stations, G.E. wagons down there receiving information from the rocket....

The instructions told Barlow exactly where to stand so the television-eyes could