Another staggering tumble, and the plane plunged downward.

“Mayday! Mayday!” the intercom was blaring. “Lost power on both engines. Going down!”

Horrified, pinned in his seat, unable even to lift his arms! Arnold saw the steel gray Atlantic rushing up toward him Then a frightful shriek of tortured metal and part of the wing ripped away.

He was too terrified to scream. But Greg’s face on the little screen smiled grimly and said, “Goodbye, Brad.”

The screen went blank and then the plane hit the water and exploded.

MARE NUBIUM

Paul pulled himself onto the flat top of the huge boulder and lay on his belly panting and sweating for long minutes.

Like when we used to climb up onto the roofs of the warehouses, when we were kids, he thought. But he knew the difference. Back then he could scramble up the warehouse walls like a monkey and then spend the rest of the day running races across the flat roofs or playing hide-and-seek with his bro’s among the cooling towers and other structures on the roofs. He remembered the chicken game they played, jumping from one roof to the next across the alleyways separating the buildings. One slip and it was the morgue or the hospital. And the police.

Good thing everything weighs one-sixth here, Paul thought. I’m sure in no shape to play tag now.

Slowly, carefully, he forced himself to his knees, and then to his feet. The GPS signal was still coming through loud and clear. No tears in the suit. Probably saved half an hour, at least, he told himself.

He walked across the big rock. Its top was not as flat as it had looked. It was pitted here and there with small, sharp craters, almost like bullet holes.

Then Paul got to the far side. He peered over the boulder’s edge. This side was much steeper than the other had been. Looks like the pissin’ rock was sheared off with a big cleaver. How the hell am I gonna get down there? There’s hardly anyplace for a toehold.

I could jump, he thought. Only about thirty feet. But he knew that, lunar gravity or not, a man could break bones jumping that far .Paul recalled a couple of wise asses who disregarded the safety regs when they had first started working on the Moon. One broke his leg. The other, his neck. How surprised the poor sonofabitch looked, even through the visor of his helmet. Died before they could get a medical team to him.

So I won’t jump, Paul concluded. But how the hell do I get down? Could go back the way I came, but that’d mean I’d have to walk all the pissin’ way around this damned rock, just as if I never climbed up here in the first place. I’ll lose an hour or more and there’s not that much oxygen left.

He rummaged through the pockets on the thighs of the suit, and in the pouches on the belt around his waist, looking for anything that might serve as a rope. All he found was a lot of useless junk, and a ten-foot length of hair-thin wire. It was used to plug the suit’s microcomputer into more powerful units, when necessary.

Too short and too frail, Paul thought But it’ll have to do.

He jammed one end of the wire into the craterlet closest to the rock’s edge, then wedged it with pebbles and bigger stones until it looked like a miniature caim. Might mark my grave, after all, he told himself.

“Okay,” he said aloud. “Down we go — one way or another.”

The wire held his weight, but as Paul cautiously edged his way down the sheer face of the boulder, he could feel the wire slipping out from under the rocks he had used to weight it down. He thought about rappelling, but figured that would just tear the wire loose even faster.

The worst part was that he couldn’t see the ground from inside his helmet. He’d have to bend over almost double to look down and he didn’t have the time or the inclination to try.

The wire felt as if it were really slithering loose. Gotta jump, Paul told himself. If I don’t-

The toe of his left boot struck a projection. A ledge, only a few inches wide, but it felt like an interstate highway and international jetport runway put together.

He found the ledge with his other boot and rested there for a moment, taking the strain off the wire.

If I can just turn around, he thought. Slowly, with infinite care, he twisted his body around in a clumsy, sweaty pirouette, never letting go of the wire dangling above his head. He only got halfway turned around. The bulky backpack of his suit stopped him from going further.

Still, it was enough. He leaned over slightly, judged his distance from the ground. Still hard to see; the dust was still clinging to his visor. Looks like more than twenty feet.

Paul turned around again until he was facing the boulder once more. He felt the wire with both gloved hands. Only another foot or so of it left.

“Okay,” he said to no one. “Just like you’re jumpin’ off the warehouse roof.”

He let go of the wire, got down on one knee, planted both his hands on the ledge, then lowered his other leg over its edge. He let himself dangle for a moment, hanging onto the ledge with his fingers while he swung his boots to touch the boulder’s face. Then he pushed off.

And fell.

It was like a dream, he fell so slowly. He had time to calculate, I’m almost six feet tall and the ledge was twenty feet above the ground so I’m really only dropping about fourteen feet and in the one-sixth gee it ought to be okay if I don’t hit another ledge or a bump or projection or— His boots slammed onto the ground. Like a parachutist, Paul let his knees bend deeply, using all his legs to absorb the impact. He whoofed out a big grunt of air, clouding his visor with his breath.

But he was standing on the ground again. No broken bones. Just a little twinge in his right ankle. Otherwise everything was okay.

He took a deep breath, turned up his helmet fan to clear the fog from his visor, and started out across the plain once again.

I must’ve saved at least fifteen minutes, he told himself, not daring to look at his watch or make an estimate of how much oxygen might be left in his backpack tank.

The ankle hurt enough to make him limp.

BOARD MEETING

Paul’s personal jet was subsonic, so he expected to arrive in New York hours later than Bradley Arnold. He had rushed from his office to the corporation’s airstrip, where Joanna was waiting for him, eager to tell her about what McPherson had learned.

But before he could start to break the news to her, Joanna asked, “Aren’t all these personal planes an expense we can cut down on?”

She was buckling herself into the co-pilot’s seat, on Paul’s right.

“You can bring it up as new business at the meeting,” he answered, watching over the plane’s stubby nose as the ground crew disconnected the towing tractor from the nose wheel.

“Perhaps I should,” Joanna said.

Paul ran up the engines, his eyes on the indicators of the control panel, amused at the no-nonsense tone of Joanna’s voice. She was taking her responsibilities as a board member seriously.

“Before you do,” he said over the muted howl of the jets, “you ought to check out the efficiency study we commissioned last year.”

He eased off the brake pedals and the plane rolled forward, Paul slipped on his headset as he maneuvered the plane toward the end of the runway. He got his clearance from the tower, pushed the throttles to full power, and the twin-jet hurtled down the runway and arrowed into the sky.

Once they were on course for LaGuardia, Paul slipped the headset down over his neck.

“I presume,” Joanna said, “that the efficiency report says your personal planes are the only thing standing between us and utter bankruptcy.”

He grinned at her. “Not quite. But the report does endorse the planes. Saves the top executives a lot of time, and time is our most precious commodity.”