there was no way to stop the leak. No logical way.

* * * * *

Back at Lunar Base I tried to explain to Bronson what had happened.
But I found that it was impossible to explain in words. In fact I no
longer entirely understood, myself, what had happened. It was
something that had occurred--not altogether on the conscious level.
Something about my becoming aware, for a time, of the separate
molecules of air within the cabin as extensions of my own body-mind.
But I didn't know how to verbalize it.

Dr. Bronson gave me a thorough physical and a preliminary
psychological exam. The effects of the drug had worn off, but I felt
somehow--changed, I didn't know just how. In fact I wouldn't know
until one day two years later, when I dropped a vial of
nitroglycerine, and it miraculously did not go off. Still, Bronson
pronounced me ready and fit for a long vacation, and in a few days I
was headed back toward Pacific Grove.

The vacation lasted for a week. Then it was a Sunday evening, and I
was sitting on the front porch of the white house nursing a highball
while my wife was upstairs telling Wendy a bedtime story about a
princess who kissed a toad, and it turned into a handsome prince.

I was sitting there in the evening light, inhaling the scent of
eucalyptus and thinking for the thousandth time about how much better
this was than bottled oxygen. Then a rented car pulled into the
driveway, and General Bergen got out, wearing civilian clothes. He
came up to the porch and sat down next to me. He did not pause for any
pleasantries.

"Where's your wife?" he said.

"Upstairs."

"Anyone else in the house?"

"Just my daughter."

He leaned back and lighted a cigarette. I was about to offer him a
drink, but he didn't give me a chance.

"Official orders. From now on, you're Top Secret. You're wanted back
at the Spacemedic Center in Washington. You have twenty-four hours to
straighten out your affairs."

"_What?_"

He waved a hand. "I wasn't supposed to tell you this yet. Keep it
under your hat." I noticed that the fingers holding his cigarette were
trembling. "We spent four days going over the hull of your ship--with
microscopes. Then we found it. The leak. The hole was still there. It
must have been a micrometeor of high density and tremendous velocity.
Burned a hole right through the sealing compound--"

Once again I tried to organize words to explain what I had not been
able to explain