Moon Dust

"Come in, Jessup.... Come in, Jessup ...." the voice said over and over.

He reached out blindly to push it away until the tearing pain in his side cleared his mind of smothering fog.

"I ... I...." he croaked.

The voice droned on unheeding for an interminable time, then:

"Jess!" it deafened him"Hey, Colonel! I've got him! He's alive! Jess—"

The voice of Colonel Markley broke in,"What happened, Jessup?" Then there was a deathly silence, awaiting.

"I ... I don't know," said Jessup."It's dark out there—the bull's-eye's dark. Or maybe I can't see—"

He checked his voice as he sensed its rising pitch. His groping hand found the emergency switch, and the panel lights came on before him like round eyes in the dark.

"Jessup, what's wrong?" roared the colonel's voice."You've been silent for an hour. We watched you land, but lost you and now we can't see you. Where are you?"

He asked himself the question, and the answer trickled slowly into his mind....I'm in a very small, padded place. My head and side hurt like fire. All I can see are those owl-eyed dials....

There should be more to see than that.

His hand next felt what his eyes now saw: the plastiglass gleam of the bull's-eye only a few inches from his face. Beyond the transparency was a darkness like the bottom of a mine.

"I don't know where I am, Colonel," he said finally."It's dark outside. I must have gone over the terminator."

He could sense the colonel waiting like a trapped hawk. There was only a three-second time-lag, but it seemed like more. It had made itself felt, like a growing sense of distance, all the way from the Station.

"You didn't cross over," insisted Markley's voice."We saw you land a hundred miles safe in sunlight. Can't you even see the stars?"

The stars! Jessup strained his face toward the little round hole of transparency, and yet he saw nothing. He felt strange, idiotic words rising:"Someone's painted it black—I fell in a puddle of ink—"

"What's that?" shouted the colonel."In God's name, man, talk sense!"

"I must have landed in a big shadow and fallen over," said Jessup."That's why it's dark."

"Apparently you hit on your head," rasped Markley."Look—pull yourself together! You're not in any shadow. You skimmed right into daylight in the middle of Nubium."

"You saw me land!" cried Jessup eagerly."How did it look from up there?"

"You went down from the West," said the colonel, speaking fast."Your jets started over the Altai Range. You sailed over Regio, apparently pretty high, and slanted in toward the edge of Pitatus. Your jets blinked out just about fifty miles north of that. That's all we saw."

"One of the steering vanes blew and she was going to spin—I had to cut the jets too high," said Jessup, his mind clearing rapidly."Wait a minute, Colonel, I'll see what gives."

There was another interval of silence, underscored by the sound of his own labored breathing. He explored his body with his hands and found many sore spots but no obvious fractures. He loosened the harness and put his feet on the floor, bracing himself with his hands against the sides of the tiny cabin. He stood there for a minute, swaying, before he realized what was wrong.

The floor wasdown.

That meant the ship was resting on her tail structure. And so the bull's-eye above his head should have gleamed with cold stars and fiery sunlight!

He placed his hand against the tiny window and clicked on his wristlight. The inner and outer surfaces of the transparency glared back in double reflection. On the outside was a sooty deposit, like a greyish something dipped in candle smoke.

"First things first," he muttered aloud and started scanning the instruments.

The chronometer s