  General perturbations of a spherical gas bubble in a compressible and
inviscid fluid with surface tension were proved in Shapiro and Weinstein
(2011), in the linearized approximation, to decay exponentially, $\sim
e^{-\Gamma t}, \Gamma>0$, as time advances. Formal asymptotic and numerical
evidence led to the conjecture that $\Gamma \approx \frac{A}{\epsilon}
\frac{We}{\epsilon^{2}} \exp(-B \frac{We}{\epsilon^2})$, where $0<\epsilon\ll1$
is the Mach number, We is the Weber number, and $A$ and $B$ are positive
constants.
  In this paper, we prove this conjecture and calculate $A$ and $B$ to leading
order in $\epsilon$.
