"Hell of a reason to kill a kid," he said softly, and turned back to the lieutenant, the man to be killed, who was sitting calmly in his chair and wondering when the brass was going to get to the point. Dundon came back and sat down, and now with great kindness, told the lieutenant the story. And so it was that Web Hilton went out into space, and saw the uncovered stars, and met the naked man, and became the first man in history to die more than once. * * * * * "You know of course," said Dundon, "that the satellite has been completed and is in orbit. The first crew went up on 9 September. Construction was finished on 20 September and the full crew was aboard within twelve hours. The whole thing went off without a hitch. There wasn't one thing we hadn't anticipated. We sent the green light to the president and sat back to wait for the Russians to find out what was 'up.'" He grinned momentarily at his joke. "The station was in orbit for a week," he went on, "and we were in constant radio contact. Furthermore, we had it under radar and telescopic observation, either one or the other or both, twenty-four hours a day, from points all over the Earth. Some of that I guess you know. The purpose is mainly to supplement the station's own radar. We don't want anything going near that station without our knowing about it real quick." "And we know damn well," he said more slowly, his puzzlement beginning to show in his voice, "that nothing went near that station." Web still waited, not following at all. Dundon sat on the edge of his desk, beginning to fidget now as he talked. His stubby fingers were running continually through his thin gray hair, and tightening his tie, and tugging at his buttons, and toying with the desk top. He had been under a great strain for a long time and it was obvious. "On 28 September," he said evenly, "--now get this--on 28 September, in the middle of the afternoon, we lost radio contact with the station. It cut off in the middle of a weather observation, just like that. There were no background sounds at all, no noise or confusion. Just silence. We waited, figuring of course that they had blown a tube, or something, but we didn't hear a thing. After a few minutes we began to get worried. They didn't come in on the emergency radio either. "Radar reported the satellite was still in the regular orbit. Nothing looked wrong, but we couldn't contact her. After a couple of hours we began to get panicky. We figured a small meteor had hit her. A big one would have knocked her out of orbit, but a small one might have penetrated through and knocked out both radios without altering trajectory to any noticeable extent. We figured that that must have been it, because by this time five hours had passed and we hadn't heard a word.