McCauley was in charge of the Platform's construction crew, which consisted of himself--a major--and Randy Hall--a captain--and Sammy Breen, a second lieutenant in the Space Service. They lived after a fashion in the cabin of the ship that had brought them and a lot of building material up and out to the orbit the Platform was to follow. When a work period ended, they made their way painfully to that cabin. They made sure that they were inside it before the sun touched the outer limits of Earth's atmosphere and turned orange and deep-red and then disappeared, all within ten seconds. It was necessary, for in Earth's shadow the gossamer-like framework lost heat rapidly. Long before the end of the eclipse, the temperature of the bare metal dropped incredibly. Even with Earth nearby to temper it, it fell to something like two hundred and twenty-odd degrees below zero. So between work periods there was darkness and unthinkable cold, and half the universe was brilliant stars--sometimes the moon was visible--and the other half looked like a hole in emptiness leading to nowhere. Actually, the seeming abyss was the night side of Earth, and sometimes Randy or young Lieutenant Breen used the telescope and found infinitesimal twinklings on it which could be calculated to be London, or New York, or Paris, or some other metropolis. But the night lights of cities on Earth were not remarkably bright, from three thousand miles out in the planet's shadow. Often, too, there were clouds thick enough to mask any man-made illumination. There was not much to see from the Platform in darkness and at an early stage of its construction. But after the darkness there came light. It was not dawn, of course. It began as a reddish-pinkish line which precisely outlined a half circle and formed a visible boundary between absolute blackness and the firmament of stars. The line thickened at its ends and then at its center. Instantly thereafter the sun peered--deep-red--around the edge of the planet Earth. It was a very lively sun. In seconds it reversed the color changes of its disappearance, fading from ruby to gold and then to the furnace-flame color it shows out of the atmosphere. And the crescent of lighted Earth grew broader and broader and suddenly seas and continents and oceans and islands seemed to come pouring out to cover the darkness, like creation happening as a flood.