ease more
oxygen. He could smell himself, the sharp bite of fear and the odor of
blood.

He felt panic. He experimented. He could move easily here where the
seven-hundred pound suit weighed only 140 pounds. He switched on the
suit's light beam. The anonymous man had said. "_Get out of the rocket
at once, silently!_"

He squeezed out of the barrel, into the larger compartment. He got the
compartment door open. Half blind by shock, he was out in the Lunar
night. "_When you get outside, stop right there. Read the
instructions!_"

He had a panicky desire to fall to his knees, cling to the rocket. He
stood there stiffly. "It isn't fair," he whispered over and over. "I
can't do it!"

_Read the instructions._

* * * * *

Alone, a man--one man--on the moon. No movement, no sound, no air, no
life. Only sharp black and white contrast of lifeless shadow to
accentuate the awful and final loneliness. Occasional meteors striking
into the pumice dust--silently, voicing the stillness of his own
terror.

He read the instructions. He hooked the capsule out of the kit, opened
it. The suit's single light beaming like a Cyclopean eye.

The giant walls of Albategnius the center of the moon's visible disk
towered bleakly up around ... everywhere ... lifelessness, just broken
rock ... no water to erode. No voices, no faces, no life anywhere.
Just Barlow. Barlow and a rocket.

And the stars and somewhere, the earth in the sky, sharp as molten
steel in the eyes. The rocket watched him and listened. This was a
target rocket. 240,000 miles away in the New Mexico blockhouse, they
were watching through the rocket's eyes, feeling through the rocket's
mechanical nervous system. The rocket carried instruments to test out
flight calculations, controls, conditions on the moon. It carried
self-operating information about the range of temperatures, radiation,
gravitational influences and other conditions to be encountered on the
journey and here on the moon's surface. It wouldn't return; only the
results of its sensory apparatus were returning now and would keep on
returning until the rocket's power ran out.

The rocket was equipped with every kind of instrument--trackers,
telemeters, and it was sending back sound and sight like a human eye
and ear. Radar stations, television stations, G.E. wagons down there
receiving information from the rocket....

The instructions told Barlow exactly where to stand so the