d
release it inside the room. An escape valve had been set to maintain
one atmosphere of pressure about them. Water dripped from a condenser
where both gases were formed to burn into water vapor and cool to
liquid form.

* * * * *

One of the windows below admitted a shaft of direct sunlight; it
illumined their room with a faint glow. It would never cease, Jerry
knew. They were in a place of eternal sunshine, yet a realm of an
endless night. Above him, as Jerry raised his head, the windows framed
nothing but utter blackness, save where some brilliant point marked
the presence of a star. He missed the soft diffusion of light that
makes daylight on earth. Here was only the one straight beam that
entered one window to make a circle of light on the opposite wall.

Jerry looked from a window of heavy glass at the side. This had been
the bottom of their ship when they left. And he found in the heavens
the object of their quest. Clear-cut and golden was half the circle;
the rest glowed faintly in the airless void. He tried to realize the
bewildering fact--the moon, this great globe that he saw, was rushing,
as were they, to their trysting-place in space.

Jerry stared until his eyes were aching. His mind refused to take hold
upon the truth he knew was true. He was suddenly tired, heavy with
weariness that was an aftermath of his emotional turmoil. He let his
heavy body relax where some blankets had piled themselves upon the
grated floor. The roar of the generator faded into far silence as he
slipped into that strange spaceless realm that men call sleep.

* * * * *

The human mind is marvelous in its power of adjustment, its
adaptability to the new and the strange. The unbelievable is so soon
the commonplace. Jerry Foster was to sleep more than once in this tiny
new world of Winslow's creating, this diminutive meteor, inside which
they lived and moved and thought and talked. The fact of their new
existence soon ceased as a topic of wonder.

They alternated in their rest. And they counted the passage of time by
the hours their watches marked, then divided these hours into days out
there where there were no days. Seven of them had passed when the hour
came that Winslow chose for checking their speed.

They were driving directly toward the moon, which was assuming
proportions like those of earth. The pilot admitted a portion of the
blast to a bow port, and the