There was silence. The Platform hurtled on around Earth. The changing, distorted patterns of land and sea seemed to writhe as they went past in the intolerably brilliant sunshine. But over at the very edge of the bright disk a little trace of blackness appeared. That would be the night line on Earth. The Platform and its company moved separately yet together toward that darkness. Presently it would cover half the disk of Earth, and then it would sweep on until only a swiftly thinning crescent of light remained, and then the Platform would plunge into utter darkness, where most of the cosmos was only shining stars and a pallid moon, the rest the blackness of the Pit. And of course, in this darkness the building satellite's unprotected substance would--like McCauley--drop to a temperature of two hundred and twenty-odd degrees below zero. "Throw your rope to Captain Hall!" McCauley snapped to Sammy Breen. "I know you'll turn somersaults. But throw it!" Silence again. McCauley made his own estimate. It was not good. He did not drift swiftly away into the emptiness which would presently be blackness and cold and death. But he had not lost all his velocity away from the Platform. He took the wrench with which he fastened together the frame members of the unlikely object which he left with such deadly deliberation. He drew up his feet below him. He placed the wrench under them. At a carefully chosen instant he thrust it violently away. He pushed the wrench toward nothingness. Its mass may have been ten pounds on Earth. His own mass, with his space suit and air tanks and the like, was probably thirty times as much. If he thrust the wrench away at thirty feet per second--and he did--he would change his own velocity by one foot per second. This might mean a slowing of his motion away, or it might mean a terribly slow drift back to the Platform and a chance for life. He took his space knife. It might weigh a pound. He threw it. Systematically and unhurriedly he denuded his belt of the tools hanging to it. A mass of possibly sixty pounds, thrown violently away, changed his velocity by as much as six or--considering that he had less mass with each bit of mass he discarded--probably seven feet per second. "I've got Sammy," said Randy's voice, hoarse and strained. "He's all right.... You don't seem to be going away any more, Ed. You're no farther than you were. Maybe I can knot ropes.... No. There aren't enough." "Right," said McCauley with an odd calm. "There wouldn't be time, anyhow. We're heading for eclipse. I've got to get back on my own--and fast. The storybooks say rockets are used by men in space to go bobbing around in their space suits. We know better. But I'm going to use one air tank." He writhed in the harness outside his space suit. He managed to detach one of his two air tanks. He aimed its pipe carefully.