colonel said. "He's just stalling to make it
look good."

"We aren't going to give up the search are we, sir?" asked the radioman.

"It would serve his soul right." The colonel stopped pacing and faced
the radioman. "Keep trying to raise him, Reinhardt. I'm going to bring
us down to forty thousand feet and search the area where he went down.
Helluva waste of rocket fuel tooling around in the atmosphere," he
muttered, disappearing through a bulkhead door.

"Wait! Colonel Towers!" Brandon called. But he knew it was no use.
Obviously he could pick up Astro but they could neither see nor hear
him.

"Captain Brandon, this is Astro calling. Over." The radioman repeated
the phrase a dozen times and each time Brandon acknowledged, swore and
acknowledged again. Finally, in desperation, he switched off the
tele-talkie.

He snapped open the back of the unit and studied the maze of
transistors, resistors, and capacitators. If there was something wrong
it was subtle, like a burned out resistor or a shorted condenser.
Whatever it was, it was beyond emergency repair. He dropped the
tele-talkie behind the seat and examined the gauge on his oxygen tank.
There was enough to last the night but not much more.

He sat down in the capsule to think. The first thing they'd locate is
the burning ship, he decided. Then they would probably start searching
in ever-widening circles. But would they see him in the faint light of
the ice moons?

He looked back at the nylon chute again. Another thought ran through his
mind. Suppose they don't spot me in the dark. When the sun--Sirius, I
mean--comes up, there's a good chance they'll spot the parachute and
search for him.

He slid the canopy open and looked down at the red soil of Sirius Three.
He hesitated for a moment, then swung his feet over the side and dropped
to the ground.

"At least I'll have that satisfaction," he said, grinning under his
oxygen mask.

Very much aware of gravity after years of weightlessness, he walked to
the canopy of the chute and spread it out on the flat ground in a full
circle. It billowed in the wind. He searched around, found some glassy
black rocks and anchored down the chute.

Then he looked at the orange glow that marked the funeral pyre of the
ship. He had a decision to make; stay here with the capsule or head for
the fire.

Couldn't be more than a thousand yards away, he decided. Charging a
walk-around oxygen bottle, he transferred his oxygen hos