area stretched away to a far-off horizon. They were now visibly
different in color from the red-yellow earth between them, and cast
long, streaky shadows. The cause of the howling was still invisible.

But Joe cared nothing for that. He stared skyward, searching. And he saw
what he looked for.

There was a small bright sliver of sunlight high aloft. It moved slowly
toward the east. It showed the unmistakable glint of sunshine upon
polished steel. It was the artificial satellite--a huge steel
hull--which had been built in the gigantic Shed from whose shadow Joe
looked upward. It was the size of an ocean liner, and six weeks since
some hundreds of pushpots, all straining at once, had gotten it out of
the Shed and panted toward the sky with it. They'd gotten it twelve
miles high and speeding eastward at the ultimate speed they could
manage. They'd fired jato rockets, all at once, and so pushed its speed
up to the preposterous. Then they'd dropped away and the giant steel
thing had fired its own rockets--which made mile-long flames--and swept
on out to emptiness. Before its rockets were consumed it was in an orbit
4,000 miles above the Earth's surface, and it hurtled through space at
something over 12,000 miles an hour. It circled the Earth in exactly
four hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds. And it would
continue its circling forever, needing no fuel and never descending. It
was a second moon for the planet Earth.

But it could be destroyed.

Joe watched hungrily as it went on to meet the sun. Smoothly,
unhurriedly, serenely, the remote and twinkling speck floated on out of
sight. And then Joe went back to the table and ate his breakfast