'It has enough to keep us in the orbit,' retorted Brandon. 'It must have picked us up while we were lying unconscious after the crash. Wish it had come closer; we might have been able to land on it.'

'Funny place, Vesta,' observed Mike Shea. 'I was down there two-three times. What a dump! It's all covered with some stuff like snow, only it ain't snow. I forget what they call it.' 

'Frozen carbon dioxide?' prompted Moore 'Yeah, dry ice. that carbon stuff, that's it. They say that's what makes Vesta so shiny.'

Of course! That would give it a high albedo.'

Mike cocked a suspicious eye at Moore and decided to let it pass. 'It's hard to see anything down there on account of the snow, but if you look close'-he pointed-'you can see a sort of gray smudge. I think that's Bennett's dome. That's where they keep the observatory. And there is Calorn's dome up there.

That's a fuel station, that is. There're plenty more, too, only I don't see them.'

He hesitated and then turned to Moore. 'Listen, boss, I've been thinking. Wouldn't they be looking for us as soon as they hear about the crash?And wouldn't we be easy to find from Vesta, seeing we're so close?'

Moore shook his head, 'No, Mike, they won't be looking for us. No one's going to find out about the crash until the Silver Queen fails to turn up on schedule. You see, when the asteroid hit, we didn't have time to send out an SOS'-he sighed-'and they won't find us down there at Vesta, either. We're so small that even at our distance they couldn't see us unless they knew what they were looking for, and exactly where to look.'

'Hmm.' Mike's forehead was corrugated in deep thought. Then we've got to get to Vesta before three days are up.'

'You've got the gist of the matter, Mike. Now, if we only knew how to go about it, eh?'

Brandon suddenly exploded, 'Will you two stop this infernal chitter-chatter and do something? For God's sake, do something.'

Moore shrugged his shoulders and without answer returned to the couch. He lounged at ease, apparently carefree, but there was the tiniest crease between his eyes which bespoke concentration.

There was no doubt about it; they were in a bad spot. He reviewed the events of the preceding day for perhaps the twentieth time.

After the asteroid had struck, tearing the ship apart, he'd gone out like a light; for how long he didn't know, his own watch being broken and no other timepiece available. When he came to, he found himself, along with Mark Brandon, who shared his room, and Mike Shea, a member of the crew, sole occupants of all that was left of the Silver Queen. This remnant was now careening in an orbit about Vesta. At present, things were fairly comfortable. There was a food supply that would last a week. Likewise there was a regional Gravitator under the room that kept them at normal weight and continue to do so for an indefinite time, certainly for longer than the air would last. The lighting system was less satisfactory but had held on so far.

There was no doubt, however, where the joker in the pack lay. Three days' air! Not that there weren't other disheartening features. There was no heating system-though it would take a long time for the ship to radiate enough heat into the vacuum of space to render them too uncomfortable. Far more important was the fact that their part of the ship had neither a means of communication nor a propulsive mechanism. Moore sighed. One fuel jet in working order would fix everything, for one blast in the right direction would send them safely to Vesta.

The crease between his eyes deepened. What was to be done? They had but one spacesuit among them, one heat ray, and one detonator. That was the sum total of space appliances after a thorough search of the accessible parts of the ship. A pretty hopeless mess, that.

Moore shrugged, rose, and drew himself a glass of water. He swallowed it mechanically, still deep in thought, when an idea struck him. He glanced curiously at the empty cup in his hand.

'Say, Mike,' he said, 'what kind of water supply have we? Funny that I never thought of that before.'

Mike's eyes opened to their fullest extent in an expression of ludicrous surprise. 'Didn't you know, boss?'

'Know what!' asked Moore impatiently.

'We've got all the water there was.' He waved his hand in an all-inclusive gesture. He paused, but as Moore's expression showed nothing but total mystification, he elaborated, 'Don't you see? We've got the main tank, the place where all the water for the whole ship was stored.' He pointed to one of the walls.

'Do you mean to say that there's a tank full of water adjoining us?'

Mike nodded vigorously, 'Yep! Cubic vat a hundred feet each way. And she's three-quarters full.'

Moore was astonished. 'Seven hundredand fifty thousand cubic feetof water.'Then suddenly:'Why hasn't it run out through the broken pipes?'

'It only has one main outlet, which runs down the corridor just outside this room. I was fixing that main when the asteroid hit and had to shut it off. After I came to I opened the pipe leading to our faucet, but that's the only outlet open now.'

'Oh.' Moore had a curious feeling way down deep inside. An idea had half-formed in his brain, but for the life of him he could not drag it into the light of day. He knew only that there was something in what he had just heard that had some important meaning but he just could not place his finger on it.

Brandon, meanwhile, had been listening to Shea in silence, and now he emitted a short, humorless laugh.

'Fate seems to be having its fill of fun with us, I see. First, it puts us within arm's reach of a place of safety and then sees to it that we have no way of getting there.

'Then she provides us with a week's food, three days' air, and a year's supply of water. A year's supply, do you hear me? Enough water to drink and to gargle and to wash and to take baths in and-and to do anything else we want. Water-damn the water!'

'Oh, take a less serious view, Mark,' said Moore in an attempt to break the younger man's melancholy.

'Pretend we're a satellite of Vesta-which we are. We have our own period of revolution and of rotation.

We have an equator and an axis. Our "north pole" is located somewhere toward the top of the porthole, pointing toward Vesta, and our "south" sticks out away from Vesta through the water tank somewhere. Well, as a satellite, we have an atmosphere, and now, you see, we have a newly discovered ocean.

'And seriously, we're not so badly off. For the three days our atmosphere will last, we can eat double rations and drink ourselves soggy. Hell, we have water enough to throw away-'

The idea which had been half-formed before suddenly sprang to maturity and was nailed. The careless gesture with which he had accompanied the last remark was frozen in mid-air. His mouth closed with a snap and his head came up with a jerk.

But Brandon, immersed in his own thoughts, noticed nothing of Moore's strange actions. 'Why don't you complete the analogy to a satellite,' he sneered, 'or do you, as a Professional Optimist, ignore any and all disagreeable facts? If I were you, I'd continue this way.' Here he imitated Moore's voice: The satellite is at present habitable and inhabited but, due to the approaching depletion of its atmosphere in three days, is expected to become a dead world. 

'Well, why don't you answer? Why do you persist in making a joke out of this? Can't you see- What's the matter?'

The last was a surprised exclamation and certainly Moore's actions did merit surprise. He had risen suddenly and, after giving himself a smart rap on the forehead, remained stiff and silent, staring into the far distance with gradually narrowing eyelids. Brandon and Mike Shea watched him in speechless astonishment.