He heard an explosive sigh of relief behind him, but he carefully did not look up at Bramwell. Bramwell was very silent these days, and he practiced extreme self-control. He realized now that he'd let too many things bother him. But he was still bothered, and horribly so, by the memory of his inability to make up his mind to face the journey in space, or to arrange for somebody to substitute for him, so he'd had to be shanghaied. He was even more bothered by the memory of his behavior when he found himself in a ship off for a swing in to Venus and out again. McCauley and Randy ignored these past happenings, and Bramwell would never be able to bring himself to mention them. But he was very much ashamed. The thing that disturbed him most, however--the thing that made him extremely conscientious and extremely self-controlled--was the consequences of not facing things and of trying to cover up his own shortcomings. When he got over his hysterics he wanted to get even with McCauley and Randy by defying them. But he hadn't dared defy them openly. He'd been peevish and ashamed and humiliated. To him the bronx cheer of the oxygen flutter valve had seemed a mockery. But he still felt superior to pieces of machinery. So when the flutter valve went "_Tht-tht-tht-tht!_" at him, he angrily turned it off. And the human race almost had to stay on Earth forever because of it. The three of them came very close to dying. McCauley continued talking matter-of-factly into the transmitter. "As a result of the jammed valve, there was a steady lowering of the oxygen content of the air, but the carbon dioxide content did not increase. The air was getting closer and closer to pure nitrogen all the time, but we didn't notice, because a person feels suffocated by an excess of carbon dioxide rather than by a lack of oxygen. We were all dying quite comfortably when the leak alarm went off because the air pressure was dropping as the oxygen left us. When the alarm went off, we found the trouble and brought the oxygen concentration up to what it should be. We think there should be no more trouble. In fact...." He stood up and handed the microphone to Bramwell. Bramwell hesitated a moment. Then he spoke. "I have to report that the problem of a stronger Bramwell-Faraday screen field seems to be solved. This particular accident suggested a theory. Quite coincidentally, the theory resembled one aspect of charged-particle theory. It led to an idea. The new screen has a very gratifying reflex action which uses the velocity of the flare particles themselves to increase the screen's resistance. The charged particles are tricked into defeating themselves. I will have a detailed account of the theory and the apparatus shortly."