He said nothing. If Randy thought that he'd run out of air before he reached the point nearest the Platform, he would reproach himself less; he'd believe he couldn't have done anything, anyhow. Fifty yards. Twenty. He saw glittering metal only sixty feet away. But there was no conceivable action he could take to move himself that sixty feet. Then something dark came toward him. It grew larger. It was Randy, plunging out from the girders with a hundred and twenty feet of space rope trailing behind him, made fast to a firmly bolted beam. He collided with McCauley. McCauley felt him gripping fiercely. He felt Randy clinging to him savagely against the jerk of the rope which must tighten presently. The jerk came, violent and abrupt. Randy gasped in relief. He took away one space-suited arm to haul at the space rope that had checked McCauley's slow drift past to nothingness. "Very nice work, Randy," said McCauley composedly, "but you took an awful chance." They bumped against the substance of the Platform--one square metal tube some three inches by five. "Can you hold on?" demanded Randy, panting. "I'll give you one of my air tanks!" They were out at the farthermost limit of the framework of the Space Platform. McCauley's faceplate began to frost now, with the loss of heat to the darkness. "Make it fast," said McCauley. "We want to get in out of the cold." Fumblings. Clatterings. McCauley heard Randy's teeth chatter, which might be cold or might be reaction from the terror he'd felt on McCauley's account. "Right!" McCauley said suddenly. He felt air blowing past his face. Randy's extra tank was connected. "I'm all set now. Let's get headed for the cabin." "Hold it!" said Randy angrily. "You tie a space rope to yourself and loop it around a beam! Do you want to take a chance on slipping away? Maybe there is only one chance in ten thousand of getting lost, but there's no need to take that!" "Okay, boss," said McCauley. "I shoulda known better." Hardly more than seconds later he was sliding toward the cabin, Randy following close behind. He came to a joint where three of the beams came together. He unlooped his space rope from the near side, looped it around beyond the joint, crawled over, and slid again. The cold came fast, but they would make it. Already his mind was at work on a matter that bothered him. He was in charge of the building of the Platform. That meant that he had to think about the feelings of the men under him. Randy was all right. He'd done a good job, and he knew it. But Sammy Breen was different. He was a very young officer, and he felt right now that he'd blundered and imperiled a senior officer--practically killed him, in fact--and he'd be in a state of almost hysterical self-abasement. Not a good state for young officers to be in. When McCauley squirmed out of the air lock, young Sammy Breen looked at him. He was deathly white and utterly ashamed.