suppose these thoughts swept me within a few seconds. I saw myself
starting to revolve in my orbit. Perhaps my motion would carry me
around indefinitely; or I might be drawn down to the vessel as those
other survivors had been drawn.

Grantline, with one of the few power suits, was coming toward me now,
with tiny fluorescent streams back along his body from his shoulder
blades. I switched on my own mechanism. It moved me toward him, and
our gravity attracted us. We shut off the power when twenty feet
apart; drifted together; contacted; bounced apart like rubber balls as
our inflated suits struck. Then in a moment we had drifted back and
clung.

I touched the metal plate of his shoulder. "Working all right?"

"Yes. Thank God for this much, Gregg. I wonder how many are alive."

In the chaos of the abandonment, many of the men's air mechanisms had
failed to operate. It is always so in times of disaster. We could see,
revolving around the wreck, and motionless against its dome, those
horrible flabby, deflated suits where the delicate Erentz mechanism
had failed. Within was only a corpse.

"Too many," I said. "And not more than four or five of us with power.
What shall we do first? Round them up? We must all get together."

His answering voice was grim. "We can tow them from the wreck. Six or
seven of us altogether have power. Do you suppose we can get away,
Gregg? Get loose from the ship before she falls?"

Only trying it could tell us that. The _Cometara_, and all of us with
her, were plunging for the Moon. We would seek out the men who were
alive and tow them in a string. If we could break the gravity pull of
the ship, and then struggle upward from the Moon, we could maintain
ourselves here in space until some rescue ship from Earth, Venus or
Mars would come and pick us up.

"You take one side, Gregg; I'll take the other. Don't go aboard; she
might collapse."

"I'll pick up the men without power and alive. The others with power
suits will do the same. Then we'll meet out here, about where we are
now?"

"Yes. And hurry, Gregg! Every mile toward the Moon makes it that much
harder. We're falling fast."

"Good luck!" I shoved away from him. And within a minute, as he went
in an arc toward the _Cometara_ bow and I toward her stern, I suddenly
thought of that returning enemy vessel. My last look through the
'scope had shown that she was returning; and then I had forgotten it.

My gaze swept the firmament now. I