"_Right_," said the voice in his helmet. "_You reached peak altitude minutes ago. You're well on the way back down, now. We're going to turn the rocket over._" He realized the absolute silence about him by the fact that now he heard trivial, insignificant noises. Steam-jets came on--hydrogen peroxide sprayed into a catalysis chamber where it broke down instantly into steam and gas. The product rushed out the fin-tip jets. The universe visibly turned upside down; the sky was down beyond his feet, and the singular, unfamiliar object which was Earth could be seen only when he craned his neck to look upward. He felt no difference, of course. He'd had no weight before, and he had none now. The appearance of Earth changed so gradually that he didn't really realize that he was approaching it. But he knew it in his mind, and he resented bitterly that he had passed the high point of this achievement and was now bound back toward the commonplace, the ordinary. He made an effort to become his normal self. "Now I suspect I'm getting scared," he said wryly into his helmet mike. If he admitted it he'd be ashamed and so could fight it. But he found that he wasn't really scared. He was apprehensive, as one is when approaching a dentist's chair. He felt reluctant, because he knew that after he got down he'd be due for ghastly, tedious days during which the doctors would go over him almost with microscopes to hunt for sputters--the burned, exploded patches that would show up where cosmic-ray particles not slowed by air went through his body. There shouldn't be any, but there could be some. Robot instruments said no sputters. But a man had to come up here to make sure. He felt something--a featherweight of pull toward the pointed tip of the nose-cone. The rocket had hit air which slowed it enough so he noticed it. He was astounded that he'd come back so far so fast. True, he was still almost unthinkably high by the standards of other men, but he'd been out in space! Earth was deplorably near. At twenty miles up--a hundred-odd thousand feet--the processes for landing him should begin. He settled himself in his seat against what was coming.... He suddenly realized that he'd been talking, though he didn't remember what he'd said. Undoubtedly, though, he'd said everything that came into his head. He stopped. The headphone voice said encouragingly, "_You're okay!_" "So far!" he answered. There was the story about the optimist who fell off a skyscraper. Twenty stories earthward he saw someone looking out a window and called, "Everything's fine so far!" Yes....