*

Johnny swam hazily back to consciousness with an aching head and thick
mouth. He saw that he had drifted clear of his protective screen somehow
and the sun beat full on him. With clumsy, fumbling hands that seemed to
belong to somebody else he managed the air valve; the increased oxygen
reviving him enough to find the pedals and jet erratically about till he
gained the shadow once more.

Now he was entering upon the worst phase of the living nightmare. Awake,
the doubts and fears of his position tormented him; wearied, he feared
to sleep, yet continually he found himself nodding only to jerk awake
with that suddenness that is like a physical blow. Each one of these
awakenings took away a little more of his self-control till he was
reduced to near hysteria, muttering abstractly, sometimes whimpering
like a lost child; now seized with a feverish concern for his air
supply. He would at one instant cut it down to a dangerous minimum,
then, remembering the near disaster of his first attempt at economy,
frantically turn it up till he was in danger of an oxygen jag. In a
moment he would forget and start all over again.

In addition, he was now realizing bitterly what he had subconsciously
denied to himself for so long, that they had found Able Jake and drawn
the obvious conclusion. That he had been obliterated or blown out
through the hull by the collision without warning or preparation. That
he was undoubtedly dead if not vaporized altogether and, as they must,
considering the expense of a probably fruitless search, abandon him.

There came the moment when Johnny accepted this in full. This was
directly after the time when, sliding down the long hill to the perigee
of his orbit, he turned on his radio and cried for help. It was a bare
hundred miles or less to that wonderful world below, but there was the
Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All
that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a
fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an
Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for some time to come.

He kept calling mechanically even after perigee was long past, praying
for an answer from the powerful transmitters below or from a searching
ship. But when there was no slightest whisper in his phones or answering
flare among the stars, Johnny came to the end of faith. Even of
awareness, for his own ears did not register the transition of