The SEVEN TEMPORARY MOONS

A Bud Gregory Novelet by WILLIAM FITZGERALD

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories February 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER I

Trouble in the Sky

The U.S. Signal Corps announced the discovery of a new satellite of Earth in the latter part of July, and newspapers everywhere broke out in a rash of pseudo-scientific comment. The new satellite had been picked up by Signal Corps radars, in the course of experiments to work out a technic for detecting guided missiles at extreme range, while they were still rising in their high-arched flight beyond the atmosphere. The radars picked up indications of an object of appreciable size at a distance of four thousand miles, which—the moon-echo aside—was a record for radar detection.

Immediately the observation was made it was repeated, and repeated again and again, for verification. When the confirmatory fixes were computed, a course and speed for the unseen object proved it to have exact orbital speed and direction. It was circling the earth between three and four thousand miles up, and made a complete circuit of the globe in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 32 seconds.

On the same day this discovery was released to the newspapers, Dr. David Murfree—formerly of the Bureau of Standards—mailed a check to Bud Gregory on the shores of Puget Sound. Also on the same day he received the papers of incorporation of a company to be called Ocean Products, Inc. He was in the peculiar position of having to get rich on Bud Gregory's brains because Bud wouldn't, and somebody had to. That same day, while Murfree was busy on the Atlantic Coast, Bud Gregory went fishing with two of his tow-headed children on the other side of the continent.

Two weeks later—in the early part of August—a second new satellite of Earth was discovered. It was closer to Earth than the first—barely 1500 miles up—and it made a circuit in 40 minutes 14 seconds. The first and farther new satellite was under continuous radar observation, now, and the fact that it was a tiny moon of Earth was completely verified, though it had not been sighted by any telescope. This newer, second 

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