f the searchlight. I
thought that was a good omen. But from there on nothing seemed to work
right.

We had been aloft about thirty-six hours, and fatigue was setting in.
I was clumsy on the steering and had quite a time making contact.

The repair went according to Hoyle, but after I had put the spin back
on the bird I found that I had no more steering fuel. I hung about ten
or fifteen feet from Telstar Three and maybe eighty feet from _Nelly_,
drifting slowly from both.

"Sid!"

"Roger, Mike."

"This one will have to make it with the girdle on."

"Can't you get it off?"

"I can't get back to it. Steering fuel gone."

"Oh, no!"

"No sweat, Sid. It occludes a small share of the solar generators, but
not enough to hurt anything."

"That's not what I meant," he said quietly into my ear. "_Nelly's_ out
of steering fuel, too. I can't pick you up!"

I gulped on that one.

"Canaveral Control!" I heard him call.

"Cut that out," I said. "They can't help. Shut up and let me think."

But he didn't, and I couldn't. I had no fuel with which to move. Sid
had only the retros and stern rockets, no good for swinging or
turning. I was out of touching range of the bird, and couldn't shove
against it to build up a little drift. Just as Sylvia said, it's not
like swimming back to shore.

There was a lot of excited chatter in my earphones, in which I did not
participate. Nobody made any sense, and Sid shut the thing down.

"Mike!"

"Yeah." Disgusted.

"Whatever you dope out, make it quick. You don't have all the air in
the world." Sid warned me.

"How much?"

"Ten minutes or so."

"All right," I said. "It ought to be enough. Keep your eye on me. You
may have to reach out an arm or leg for me to grab as I go by."

"How are you going to move?"

"I've got a lifesaver," I said.

* * * * *

I writhed and squirmed and made every use of the law of conservation
of angular momentum until I had my back to _Nelly_. Then I wound up
and threw my fancy screwdriver as hard as I could heave it away from
me. I didn't get the zip on it I would have liked, but because it was
sort of like a throwing stick, I got a little more on it than you
might expect, maybe fifty or sixty feet a second. And the thing
weighed about four pounds, with its fancy ratchet and torque clutch.
Since in my suit I weighed just about a hundred times as much, I
started toward _Nelly_ at just one-one-hundredth of the velo