Part 2

"A German checked your figures, Diavilev. Do you understand? A German who is now dead found you out, fool. Your trajectory was radioed to Earth and checked and corrected, and the meteor will not fall in the ocean, Diavilev. It will land on the capitol of the United States!

"And you will be on it. All the way down you will be on it. Is that not a fitting end? We are a great people, Diavilev, a poetic and powerful people. Is your ending not poetic?..."

Diavilev rose wearily and clambered up the iron walls to a higher place, a place from which he could see the sun. Krylov was beginning to rave, working himself into a frenzy. Diavilev turned him off, waited patiently in the black silence.

There was nothing heroic about him. If he had it to do now he would not do it at all, but it was fixed and irrevocable and now he would have to wait, afraid and unutterably lonely, until the end.

The stars above him were a billion icy eyes.

After a while there was a flash, and the moonlet kicked under his feet.

He held on as the metal rocked. He waited, waited, waited, until he could feel it beginning to fall. Then he took a deep breath and spoke:

"Krylov."

"Goodbye."

"Krylov," Diavilev said quietly, "listen, my army friend. You gave me a problem. The problem had two parts. Two parts, army man. And if the first part is wrong the other does not matter."

At the other end of the radio, borne through space and the rushing emptiness, Diavilev sensed the beginning of fear. He was able to smile.

"What?..." came faintly.

"When you checked the trajectory, did you also bring some German up to compute the size of the moonlet all over again?"

Nothing. Diavilev chuckled.

"You didn't, did you, Krylov?"

There was nothing on the radio but an aching, brittle static.

"You used the speed _I_ gave you; you used the mass _I_ gave you. The moon will not fall on America, Krylov."

Gradually now, over the weakening radio, came back the sounds which were to be the last pleasure of Pyotr Diavilev's life. Rage first, and a vast incoherence, and then Krylov began to change in an ugly, despairing, dirty way, whimpering, and all Diavilev could understand was: "... _my idea, it was my idea!_"

But now Diavilev could not listen, because the moon was falling and there was very little time. An end in fire, the little man thought, a blessed quick end as I hit the air. He shouted, trying to make himself heard.

"We are both dying, army man. Soldier boy, my captain, _do you know where the moon will fall_?"

Krylov knew. He went mad.

"Watch me go!" and now Diavilev was laughing, "take your seat of honor and watch me all the way. Here I go, Krylov, watch me! Watch your world!"

He stopped, out of breath, to hang on, while the moon fell away beneath him, faster, faster, and the stars began to whirl, and a poetic end, he thought, a lovely end, let there be an end. And eventually the end came and Diavilev was dust, and his dust mingled evenly with the fire-blasted soil of Russia.