direction as the moonlet's course, in its gravity field.... I don't know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time.... Anyway, now I'm being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet—how about that? Yes, sir, I'm circling down closer and closer to the moonlet.... No, don't worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I'm drifting down gently as a cloud.... Stand by for my landing on Earth's second moon!"

The bloated figure in the bulging space suit circled the black stony surface several more times, in a narrowing spiral, and finally landed with a soft skidding bump that didn't even jar Dan's teeth. He bounced several times from a diminishing height of fifty-odd feet in grotesque slow-motion before he finally came to a stop.

He sat still for a moment, adjusting to the fantastic fact of being shipwrecked on an unchartered moonlet, crowding down his pulse rate which might be over ten percent normal now.

"Okay, Rough Rock, I hear you.... You're telling me, sir?... Obviously, I'm marooned here. No rocket to leave with. No way to get back to terra firma ... what? If you'll pardon my saying so, sir, that's a silly question.... Of course I'm scared! Scared green. Sorry about the rocket, sir, losing it for you.... Me, sir? Thank you, sir. But stop apologizing, will you? I know you haven't got any duplicates of the VX-3 ready, no rescue rocket...."

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

Dan grinned suddenly. "Look, what have I got to kick about? I'll go out in a flash of glory—at least one headline will put it that way—and I'll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered that Earth 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 runt moon makes tracks around Earth in probably two hours minus. If I remember my Spacenautics right I'm already looking down over the Grand Canyon, heading west. I'm going to get a pretty terrific bird's-eye view of the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how much oxygen I've got left.... Lucky, eh?"

Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of the Earth below him. His little moonlet did not rotate, or rather it rotated once for each revolution around Earth, as the Moon did, keeping one face earthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The Sierras on Earth hove into clear view and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, then Japan, Asia, Europe.... No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It would be across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the South Pole, then up around over the top of the world past Greenland, following that great circle around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip around the world ever made by man!

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

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

"Nothing much to report, Colonel. It's a dead, airless pip-squeak planetoid, just a big mile-thick rock, probably. No life, no vegetation, no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the Man in the Second Moon—and the joke's on me! Well, one and three-quarter hours of oxygen left, by the gauge, or 105 minutes—sounds like more that way.... What's that, 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.