Then they had suited up and blown the cabin pressure. The co-pilot had gone out the hatch while the pilot remained at his controls. Watching through the periscope, he could see Duport spread-eagled against the sky, the left side of his body a glare of sunlight, the right side in shadow. Duport had not moved his arms or legs since they had first seen him, neither did he acknowledge with his suit transmitter. He was about five hundred meters from the ship and drifting slowly closer. The co-pilot tethered himself to the hull, then tossed out a line with a magnetic grapple on its end. He missed, hauled in, and tossed again. On the third try the end of the line passed within half a meter of Duport's body. Duport moved his arm, took the end of the line, and hooked it to his belt. The co-pilot hauled him in. * * * * * About a month later, the American pilot saw Rene Duport for the first time since he had jumped from the _Prospero_. It was at the space medicine laboratories at Walter Reed. Dr. Valdez stood near the window, looking down at the sunlit lawn. In the shade of a tall shrub a man was sitting in a lawn chair, his head back, completely relaxed. He wore a blue denim hospital uniform. His back was to the window. "Physically he was in good condition when they brought him down," the doctor said, "except for a slight case of dehydration." "Can I talk to him?" the pilot asked. Dr. Valdez looked at him sharply, as if surprised by the request. "You can talk to him if you like. But he won't answer you." The pilot followed the doctor out of the room and down to the lawn. They came up from behind the lawn chair and stood looking down at the man sitting in it. His eyes were closed. The pilot saw that Duport's jaw was slack. He could not tell whether he was asleep. The flesh in his cheeks was sunken. He looked older. Dr. Valdez said, "Catatonia, schizophrenia, it's like no condition I've ever seen before. He is perfectly aware of what is going on around him, you see. Bring him food and he eats. Stick him with a pin and he jumps. All his responses are normal. He took the cable and attached it himself, remember. But he will make no more than the minimum necessary effort to survive." The doctor chewed his lip, thinking. "If only he would say something." "Have you decided why he jumped?" the pilot asked, not realizing that he was whispering. "What made him panic?" "No." The doctor shook his head. "Not panic, it wasn't fear alone, I think. There was something else. We put him through equally critical moments in training, and he didn't panic then. Fear was part of it, but there was something else too." "Well, what then?" "I don't know the word. It's something new. Maybe Duport is a new kind of human being. If not fear, call it--love, or desire. He jumped into space because, I think, he wanted to." "I don't understand that," the pilot said.