for the sun before I could start work. When it came up,
heating seemed quick. First a test with a thermocouple showed that
Telstar's surface was warming nicely and would soon support the
pressure-sensitive mat I was going to stick to some of her solar
generators. When the 'couple said Telstar had reached zero centigrade,
I pulled the mat loose from where it was stuck to my left leg and
plastered it above the gate I was going to open. I say above, because
it was closer to one pole--the "North" pole of the satellite--than the
gate.

It was time to go to work on my first screw. And there I got my next
lesson. It was a real big screw, as they go, a 4-40 flat head machine
screw with a length of about three-quarters of an inch. I would have
to give it thirty turns to back it out. I never gave it the first
turn. The head snapped off as soon as I applied a few inch-pounds of
torque.

Yes, the surface had heated up nicely, but the shank of the screw was
about two hundred below zero centigrade, and far brittler than glass.

I cussed some and reported to Sid what had happened.

"Have to drill it out," I said.

My drill was a cutie. It was a modified dentists' drill, the kind
that's run by a little air turbine at about two hundred thousand
r.p.m.'s. I really mean that. They turn like mad.

I'd been taught to use it with care. When a dentist drills your teeth,
he blows olive oil and water through the turbine, and the mixture
cools the tooth--and the drill--while the cutting is going on. We
couldn't afford any cloud of vapor--or the shorting out that ice would
cause--so I had only the pressurized mixture of oxygen and helium in
the tanks on my back to run the drill. And that meant light and
intermittent pressures on the number 43 wire gauge drill--the one
that's the right size to drill out a 4-40. It took me about fifteen
minutes and I was down to my last number 43 drill bit when she broke
free.

From then on I had to heat each screw before I went to work on it. I
had something like a soldering iron that I could press against the
screw-head. Heat would flow through the highly conductive alloy and
make it less brittle. I flicked each screw I removed out into space
and at last carefully hinged the gate wide open.

The gate was the length of the sector--about two feet. It was four
inches wide and about an inch thick and had parts strung along it like
kernels on an ear of corn.

At this stage I readjusted the position of my