hat I expected. I crawled around the entire circumference of the
hull and found only a thin silvery haze. The air as it leaked out
formed a thin atmosphere around the hull, held there by the faint
gravity of the ship's mass. Dust motes in the air, reflecting
sunlight, were enough to hide any microscopic geyser spout. Before I
re-entered the air lock I looked out into space, in the direction away
from the sun. Out there, trailing far away, the air had formed a
silver tail, I saw it faintly shimmering in the night. I was going to
make a good comet.

I got back inside and stripped off the suit. Then I raised Lunar Base
again and tapped out, HAVE INSPECTED HULL. RESULTS NEGATIVE. A few
minutes later the reply came back, STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS. For my
morale.

* * * * *

I lighted another cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked
around at the interior of my expensive, ten-foot coffin. I figured I
would last for about another seventy-five hours. Of course I could
take cyanide and get it over with. But this wouldn't be such a bad way
to go. Within seventy-five hours the last of my reserve tanks would be
empty. Then I would just wait for the rest of the air to leak out of
the cabin. First I would lose consciousness with anoxia. I'd hardly
even notice. Then as the pressure got lower my body fluids would begin
to evaporate.

Once I had seen a mummy in a museum, it was some old prospector who
had been lying in the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I was
going to look like him, dried up, yellow, my teeth protruding in a
grin, perfectly preserved. With no pilot, the ship would go into a
cometary orbit around the sun. Maybe in a hundred years or so someone
would come and take me back to a museum on earth.

I began to think about my wife, Sandy. I got out a piece of paper and
wrote a long letter to her. I thought, maybe she'll even get to read
it some day. Writing gave me something to do. I wrote about the time
we had gone up to the Sierras together and slept in a sleeping bag at
the edge of a four-thousand foot cliff. And about the times we had
gone out in our cabin cruiser, the time we both nearly drowned. And
asked about our daughter Wendy, who would be four now. I remembered
part of an old poem:

Christ! That my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

Writing was all right, until I realized that I had begun feeling sorry
for myself, and I was letting it get