Spinning as they were, the universe of stars and sun and the vast, unfamiliar, brilliantly lighted object which was Earth seemed to be engaged in a monstrous saraband. Now Sammy was a glaringly bright object with full, blazing sunshine hitting his space suit. Again he was lighted from the side with the brightness of Earth behind him, racing past his body with all its features blurred. Yet again the stars seemed not points of light but streaks, and there were moments when the sun itself was a flashing band of intolerable brightness. But somehow this vast and silent motion of the cosmos seemed unreal. It was like a hallucination. It was like a nightmare in which absolutely nothing was true; in which there was no actual sun or Earth or stars, because in reality those things did not swing in lunatic sweeps around anybody, anywhere. While the younger man blindly obeyed McCauley, they continued to drift away toward infinity. Curiously enough, the centrifugal force caused by their spinning gave McCauley the only sensation of weight that he'd had since his arrival at the orbit of the Platform. Randy's voice came in McCauley's headphones. "Ed! My God!" His tone was anguished and hopeless. "Randy," said McCauley in clipped tones. "You can be useful. When we're in line with you, say 'tip.' Say it again. Keep it up." Almost instantly Randy said, "Tip." Then, "Tip." Then, "Tip" again. Sammy Breen said hoarsely: "All my equipment, sir, is fastened to your space rope. Everything but my air tanks." "Right. Now let go of it," commanded McCauley. "Randy, how fast are we drifting away?" Randy's voice came hoarse and harsh. "I don't know. Slowly, but you're a good hundred and fifty feet off. A trifle more." McCauley calculated aloud, for his own comfort as well as the information of Randy and Sammy Breen. "We've been drifting maybe half a minute. Those 'tips' of yours were about one second apart. We're spinning once in two seconds at the ends of a thirty-foot rope. Each of us has an angular velocity of something over forty feet per second. Forty-five or better. Our joint speed away from the Platform--a hundred and fifty feet in thirty seconds.... Somewhere around five feet per second. Not much more, anyhow! We're practically crawling away, but we're spinning like blazes." Randy said, dry-throated: "Even if we had rope, Ed, I couldn't get it to you." "I know," said McCauley curtly. "Lieutenant?" "Yes, sir," said Sammy Breen's voice, quite steady now. "I've thought of something, sir. If we act fast and I cut the rope at just the right instant, sir...." "Keep quiet!" snapped McCauley. "That's an order! Right now I want you to push that equipment at the end of my rope away from you as hard as you can, in the direction we're spinning. The way we're spinning! You've got too much angular velocity. Understand?" "Yes, sir," said Sammy. "I'm glad, sir...." "Keep quiet!" snapped McCauley again. "Push!"