Experimentally he caressed his burned face. Looking out the windows he tried to see some cause for the shock. Then he realized his moon was gone. It had passed out of the deep shadow into the penumbra of the ship and had been instantly vaporized. The shock had been its dissociated molecules pummeling the front of the ship. He would have to be careful. If that could have passed directly into the full light instead of through the half shadow of the penumbra, the front of the ship might have caved in, softened as it was to near plasticity. Jim reached for the log again, but his hand stopped in mid air. With the spaceman's sensitivity to changes of state, he knew something was wrong. Something had changed in the shock of the moon's explosion. He puzzled it over, but his heat befuddled brain refused to grasp things. He scanned all the instruments on the panel, but saw nothing unusual. At one side, he had a little tracer going, little drum turning with a needle scribing a red line. On it he had set the increase in the sun's pull against time to describe a curve. He examined this curve. The red line had changed direction suddenly; the sun's pull was increasing faster. "Dammit!" he said. The force of the explosion in front had slowed him and shorn off some protective centrifugal force. Now he picked up points on the new curve, set down equations, and found he would die some twenty hours sooner than he had expected. * * * * * His mind began to revolt at the training that made him go on like this. The turning of the ship now showed him only the face of the sun. He looked at it a while, then shrugged his shoulders in disgust. Slowly he got up and walked toward the gun cabinet. The little door swung open as he pressed the button and he stared at the holstered weapon. Leaving the door open, he walked away, looking back toward it. He retrieved his cup and filled it with tepid water. Throwing his head back he drained it at a gulp; then refilled it. He walked to the engine compartment door. It swung open at his touch, and he stepped into the tiny gangway. Here a tiny porthole looked out into the infinite blue-black deeps of space. Jim leaned against a bulkhead and wiped sweat from his eyes. He tried to think. Not of escape, but of the frigid emptiness of space, the cool earth he had left behind. Into his mind came a fleeting glimpse of a lake back home on earth, a cold lake ringed with blue-green pines, jade waters where he had dived deep with the iciness stinging his skin. Against the metal bulkhead, his back began to burn. The vision faded. He realized he was thirsty all over. He gulped his cup of water and went back to the pilot's compartment. At the open door of the gun cabinet, he stopped and sent his empty cup clattering against the sunward windows. He took the gun from the cabinet.