"Can anyone read me? Does anyone read me down there? "_Kann jedermann mich hören? Antworten-Sie, bitte...._ "_Repondez, repondez si vous m'entendrez...._ "_Damn you can't you hear me_ CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?" * * * * * He'd tried to keep track of the time. He thought it had been a month; maybe more, but a month anyway. And now the blue was solid over Earth, over all of it. There were still little swirls, little eddies of it here and there, but most of it--already, most of it had settled like a fixed shell, like the quiescent surface of a stagnant pool. And somehow he'd accepted it. They were all dead down there. Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all.... Funny. It had a rhythm to it. Cobalt blue had killed them all, killed them all, Cobalt bombs had killed them all-- _STOP IT!_ But if they were all dead.... And if he were not dead.... Then he was the last human being left alive. That was crazy. Nobody could be--nobody could be the last-- But there was nobody. Except him. So, it followed: therefore--ergo: logically, if there was nobody, and if.... God, it was dark. God, it was quiet. And if.... If you laugh you'll go crazy. If you don't laugh, if you don't laugh, if you--hell, only one dose of barbiturate left in the First Aid stores ... big thing, hard to swallow ... and if there's nobody left, then.... Sleep. * * * * * He hadn't touched the UHF in three months, but he'd left it on regardless of the power drain just in case. He had divided the hours off into sleeping and eating periods, and he had just slept, and just eaten, and he'd shaved, and put on a fresh uniform. He had knotted the tie perfectly; his collar insignia were shined and pinned in place without a single wrinkle. He had it figured out. He could die of oxygen, if not food, starvation in five more months, three and one-half more days. And that would be the end of it. The hell it would! Who the hell did they think they were to do this to him.... But he had his computers. He had his reference-tapes. He had his refractor and his scanners, and his star-charts, and his store of fuel for orbital correction (ninety percent of which remained, because it had been an almost perfect shot) and he had his brains. If you threw a stone off the rear of a moving train at a speed _less_ than the train's speed forward, the stone would of course leave the train, but in relation to the ground would still be travelling in the train's direction. If you threw a satellite away from its path around Earth and directly into Earth's wake, but at a speed less than Earth's forward speed in its orbit, the satellite would break free, but would continue in Earth's orbital direction. And then with a brief side-blast, you could warp into an orbit around the Sun all your own, or--into that of the planet Venus, if you chose.... And beneath that eternal shell of cloud--who knew?