anything at all except the clothes we stood in. The _Minnow_ was
meant for short heavy hops to planets or asteroids. In addition to the
ion drive it had emergency atomic rockets, using steam for reaction
mass. We thanked God for that when Cazamian canceled our downwards
velocity with them in a few seconds. We curved away up over China and
from about fifty miles high we saw the _Whale_ hit the Pacific. Six
hundred tons of mass at well over two thousand miles an hour make an
almighty splash. By now you'll have divers down, but I doubt they'll
salvage much you can use.

"I wonder why James went down with the ship, as the saying is? Not that
it made any difference. It must have broken his heart to know that his
lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human
error?

"We didn't have time to think about that, or even to get the radio
working. The steam rockets blew up. Poor Cazamian was burnt to a crisp.
Only thing that saved me was the spacesuit I was still wearing. I
snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I
saw Charley coming out of the toilet--that's how he'd escaped--and I saw
him beginning to laugh. Then the port side collapsed and I fell out.

"I saw the launch spinning away, glowing red against a purplish black
sky. I tumbled head over heels towards the huge curved shield of earth
fifty miles below. I shut my eyes and that's about all I remember. I
don't see how any of us could have survived. I think we're all dead.

"I'll have to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I
can't. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I'm dead so I can't stand
up."

* * * * *

There was silence for a while except for the vicious howl of the wind.
Then snow began to shift on the ledge. A man crawled stiffly out and
came shakily to his feet. He moved slowly around for some time. After
about two hours he returned to the hollow, squatted down and switched on
the recorder. The voice began again, considerably wearier.

"Hello there. I'm in the bleakest wilderness I've ever seen. This place
makes the moon look cozy. There's precipice around me every way but one
and that's up. So it's up I'll have to go till I find a way to go down.
I've been chewing snow to quench my thirst but I could eat a horse. I
picked up a short-wave broadcast on my suit but couldn't understand a
word. Not English, not French, and there I stick. Listened to it for
fif