visualized the mess that must be down below, the jets and undercarriage smashed and twisted.... Then Markley's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Yes, yes, I see it—" the colonel was shouting at someone on the other end. Then his voice became low, hesitant, "Jess—we may have something here.... I'm looking at a photo of the spot you went down. I don't see your rocket, but there's a—a—uh, pit that looks different from the rest of the smallpox. Like a dent in a hill of sand. I'm afraid to say what it might mean!"

So that was it. Sand—no, volcanic ash! Of course they had known that parts of the moon would be covered with it. What they hadn't known—what even the Space Station's telescopes hadn't been able to tell them—was how soft the stuff was, and how deep. Jessup felt an ancient horror clutching at him—a horror that should have been totally foreign to the vast sweep of space.

He was buried alive.

"Like a stone in a puddle of mud," said Markley gloomily to White, the Station's Second. "Maybe we ought to be thankful; the stuff probably saved his life!"

"Saved him! What for, if he can't get out?"

The colonel shrugged his shoulders, his face an expressionless mask for his thoughts. White could sense the tortured anxiety of the older man. More than anyone, he had worked for and pushed Project Moon. He'd never really been a military man. Space was his driving mania. He'd risen to General once, but had been busted for plugging his conviction too hard.... And now—in the penultimate moment—this!

"How deep could he be and still send?" Markley asked of the man with the earphones.

"His signal's weak and distorted. Antenna might be damaged or partly under. At that, I don't know if a few feet of that dust would stop shortwave—"

"Might be fifteen feet," muttered Markley, his face gray and tired-looking. "God! Maybe he's still sinking!"

"Sir, we don't know that he's that deep," cautioned White. "I don't see how an impact could bury him like that."

"What do we know of the conditions?" moaned the colonel. "That stuff must be absolutely dry—and loosely packed. In the light gravity it probably flows like water—quicksand! I should have thought of it—"

"Jessup wants to know if there are any orders, sir," 

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