Morgan said, “Do you suppose they’ll try anything?”
“Like what?” said Kaufman.
“Like knocking us out of orbit if they can. Like shooting at us if they have a gun. Like throwing something at us, if they’ve got nothing better to do.”
“My God,” said McNary, “you think they might have brought a gun up here?”
Morgan began examining the interior of the tiny cabin. Slowly he turned his head, looking at one piece of equipment after another, visualizing what was packed away under it and behind it. To the right of the radio was the space-suit locker, and his glance lingered there. He reached over, opened the door and slipped a hand under the suits packed in the locker. For a moment he fumbled and then he sat back holding an oxygen flask in his hand. He hefted the small steel flask and looked at Kaufman. “Can you think of anything better than this for throwing?”
Kaufman took it and hefted it in his turn, and passed it to McNary. McNary did the same and then carefully held it in front of him and took his hand away. The flask remained poised in mid-air, motionless. Kaufman shook his head and said, “I can’t think of anything better. It’s got good mass, fits the hand well. It’ll do.”
Morgan said, “Another thing. We clip extra flasks to our belts and they look like part of the standard equipment. It won’t be obvious that we’re carrying something we can throw.”
McNary gently pushed the flask toward Morgan, who caught it and replaced it. McNary said, “I used to throw a hot pass at Berkeley. I wonder how the old arm is.”
The discussion went on. At one point the radio came to life and Kaufman had a lengthy conversation with one of the control points on the surface of the planet below. They talked in code. It was agreed that the American satellite should not move to make room for the other, and this information was carefully leaked so the Russians would be aware of the decision.
The only difficulty was that the Russians also leaked the information that their satellite would not move, either.
A final check of the two orbits revealed no change. Kaufman switched off the set.
“That,” he said, “is the whole of it.”
“They’re leaving us pretty much on our own,” said McNary.
“Couldn’t be any other way,” Morgan answered. “We’re the ones at the scene. Besides”—he smiled his tight smile— “they trust us.”
Kaufman snorted. “Ought to. They went to enough trouble to pick us.”
McNary looked at the chronometer and said, “Three quarters of an hour to passage. We’d better suit up.”
Morgan nodded and reached again into the suit locker. The top suit was McNary’s, and as he worked his way into it, Morgan and Kaufman pressed against the walls to give him room. Kaufman was next, and then Morgan. They set out the helmets, and while Kaufman and McNary made a final check of the equipment, Morgan took several sights to verify their position.
“Luck,” said Kaufman, and dropped his helmet over his head. The others followed and they all went through the air-sealing check-off. They passed the telephone wire around, and tested the circuit. Morgan handed out extra oxygen flasks, three for each. Kaufman waved, squeezed into the air lock and pulled the hatch closed behind him. McNary went next, then Morgan.
Morgan carefully pulled himself erect alongside the outer hatch and plugged the telephone jack into his helmet. As he straightened, he saw the Earth directly in front of him. It loomed large, visible as a great mass of blackness cutting off the harsh white starshine. The blackness was smudged with irregular patches of orangish light that marked the cities of Earth.
Morgan became aware that McNary, beside him, was pointing toward the center of the Earth. Following the line of his finger Morgan could see a slight flicker of light against the blackness; it was so faint that he had to look above it to see it.
“Storm,” said McNary. “Just below the equator. It must be a pip if we can see the lightning through the clouds from here. I’ve been watching it develop for the last two days.”
Morgan stared, and nodded to himself. He knew what it was like down there. The familiar feeling was building up, stronger now as the time to passage drew closer. First the waiting. The sea, restless in expectancy as the waves tossed their hoary manes. The gathering majesty of the elements, reaching, searching, striving. . . . And if at the height of the contest the screaming wind snatched up and smothered a defiant roar from a mortal throat, there was none to tell of it.
Then the time came when the forces waned. A slight letup at first, then another. Soon the toothed and jagged edge of the waves subsided, the hard side-driven spray and rain assumed a more normal direction.
The man looked after the departing storm, and there was pain in his eyes, longing. Almost, the words rose to his lips, “Come back, I am still here, do not leave me, come back.” But the silent supplication went unanswered, and the man was left with a taste of glory gone, with an emptiness that drained the soul. The encounter had ended, the man had won. But the winning was bitter. The hard fight was not hard enough. Somewhere there must be a test sufficient to try the mettle of this man. Somewhere there was a crucible hot enough to float any dross. But where? The man searched and searched, but could not find it.
Morgan turned his head away from the storm and saw that Kaufman and McNary had walked to the top of the satellite. Carefully he turned his body and began placing one foot in front of the other to join them. Yes, he thought, men must always be on top, even if the top is only a state of mind. Here on the outer surface of the satellite, clinging to the metallic skin with shoes of magnetized alloy, there was no top. One direction was the same as another, as with a fly walking on a chandelier. Yet some primordial impulse drove a man to that position which he considered the top, drove him to stand with his feet pointed toward the Earth and his head toward the outer reaches where the stars moved.
Walking under these conditions was difficult, so Morgan moved with care. The feet could easily tread ahead of the man without his knowing it, or they could lag behind. A slight unthinking motion could detach the shoes from the satellite, leaving the man floating free, unable to return. So Morgan moved with care, keeping the telephone line clear with one hand.
When he reached the others, Morgan stopped and looked around. The sight always gave him pause. It was not pretty; rather, it was harsh and garish like the raucous illumination of a honkytonk saloon. The black was too black, and the stars burned too white. Everything appeared sharp and hard, with none of the softness seen from the Earth.
Morgan stared, and his lips curled back over his teeth. The anticipation inside him grew greater. No sound and fury here; the menace was of a different sort. Looming, quietly foreboding, it was everywhere.
Morgan leaned back to look overhead, and his lips curled further. This was where it might come, this was the place. Raw space, where a man moved and breathed in momentary peril, where cosmic debris formed arrow-swift reefs on which to founder, where star-born particles traveled at unthinkable speeds out of the macrocosm seeking some fragile microcosm to shatter.
“Sun.” Kaufman’s voice echoed tinnily inside the helmet. Morgan brought his head down. There, ahead a tinge of deep red edged a narrow segment of the black Earth. The red brightened rapidly, and broadened. Morgan reached to one side of his helmet and dropped a filter into place; he continued to stare at the sun.
McNary said, “Ten minutes to passage.”
Morgan unhooked one of the oxygen cylinders at his belt and said, “We need some practice. We’d better try throwing one of these now; not much time left. He turned sideways and made several throwing motions with his right hand without releasing the cylinder. “Better lean into it more than you would down below. Well, here goes.” He pushed the telephone line clear of his right side and leaned back, raising his right arm. He began to lean forward. When it seemed that he must topple, he snapped his arm down and threw the cylinder. The recoil straightened him neatly, and he stood securely upright. The cylinder shot out and down in a straight line and was quickly lost to sight. .