He was neither confident that he was not burned
inside, nor sure that he was. He simply was not afraid. Nobody really
ever believes that he is going to die--in the sense of ceasing to exist.
The most arrant coward, stood before a wall to be shot, or strapped in
an electric chair, finds that astoundingly he does not believe that what
happens to his body is going to kill him, the individual. That is why a
great many people die with reasonable dignity. They know it is not worth
making too much of a fuss over.

But when the Geiger counters had gone over him from head to foot, and
his body temperature was normal, and his reflexes sound--when he was
assured that he had not been exposed to dangerous radiation--Joe felt
distinctly weak in the knees. And that was natural, too.

He went trudging back to the wrecked gyros. His friends were gone,
leaving a scrawled memo for him. They had gone to pick out the machine
tools for the work at hand.

He continued to check over the wreckage, thinking with a detached
compassion of that poor devil Braun who was the victim of men who hated
the idea of the Space Platform and what it would mean to humanity. Men
of that kind thought of themselves as superior to humanity, and of human
beings as creatures to be enslaved. So they arranged for planes to crash
and burn and for men to be murdered, and they practiced blackmail--or
rewarded those who practiced it for them. They wanted to prevent the
Platform from existing because it would keep them from trying to pull
the world down in ruins so they could rule over the wreckage.

Joe--who had so recently thought it likely that he would die--considered
these actions with an icy dislike that was much deeper than anger. It
was backed by everything he believed in, everything he had ever wanted,
and everything he hoped for. And anger could cool off, but the way he
felt about people who would destroy others for their own purposes could
not cool off. It was part of him. He thought about it as he worked, with
all the noises of the Shed singing in his ears.

A voice said: "Joe."

He started and turned. Sally stood behind him, looking at him very
gravely. She tried to smile.

"Dad told me," she said, "about the check-up that says you're all right.
May I congratulate you on your being with us for a while?--on the
cobalt's not getting near you?--or the rest of us?"

Joe did not know exactly what to say.

"I'm going inside the Platform," she told him. "W