"I'm sorry you tore up your pilot chute," said Furness. "It about kills your chance of getting down to the ground in one piece. And it's my fault. You tore it up for me. But when I came on the ship I didn't think I was hurt badly." "I'd have done just what you did," said McCauley. "It would have taken two broken legs to keep me from walking over as if nothing had happened to me." Then he remembered. "Report?" Furness gathered his strength and spoke in an almost natural voice: "X-21 reporting. We are over Antarctica at the farthest south part of our orbit. Altitude...." He went through the list, and then his eyes went to the canteen from which McCauley had given him water. McCauley gave him another drink. "That son of mine," said Furness abruptly. "He reveres you. When I was picked to ride observer with you, he almost went out of his head with pride. I was--I suspect I was a little bit jealous of you. A man likes his son to think he's the greatest man on earth. My boy almost believed it when I was picked for this job. But if I'd backed out...." McCauley nodded. "Under the circumstances," he agreed, "you'd walk to the ship and come aboard if you had to carry your head in your hand. A man wouldn't disappoint his son." "He'd have been so proud," said Furness, "if we'd made it! And I've messed it all up!" "I'm hanged if I'll compliment you," McCauley said, "but it would have been disgraceful if you'd done anything else. A man has to set an example for his son. And we may make out. In any case we're just thirty-two minutes from some very tricky stuff. I think we'd better think of cheerier things." "Sorry," said Furness. He turned his eyes away. He brooded. Seconds ticked by in the cabin. Frost began to form on the ports. There was no air outside, so there could not be said to be any temperature. But the ship radiated heat into empty space and received next to none in return. If allowed to cool until thermal equilibrium with its surroundings was reached, the X-21 would go down to some two hundred and fifty-four degrees below zero centigrade. But that would be in darkness. In sunlight it would be a different matter, and the ship'd be out of darkness in minutes. They were very long minutes. The altitude radar said that the ship was maintaining the most nearly perfect circular orbit any man-made object had achieved to date. The X-21 was a lonely mote with yellow light glowing from its cabin openings. From time to time, invisibly, radio waves spread out from a stiff metal rod pointed sternward, and some of them might--with luck--be picked up by somebody. But the ship received nothing, here.