When he reached the others, Morgan stopped and looked around. The sight always gave him pause. It was not pretty; rather, it was harsh and garish like the raucous illumination of a honkytonk saloon. The black was too black, and the stars burned too white. Everything appeared sharp and hard, with none of the softness seen from the Earth. Morgan stared, and his lips curled back over his teeth. The anticipation inside him grew greater. No sound and fury here; the menace was of a different sort. Looming, quietly foreboding, it was everywhere. Morgan leaned back to look overhead, and his lips curled further. This was where it might come, this was the place. Raw space, where a man moved and breathed in momentary peril, where cosmic debris formed arrow-swift reefs on which to founder, where star-born particles traveled at unthinkable speeds out of the macrocosm seeking some fragile microcosm to shatter. "Sun." Kaufman's voice echoed tinnily inside the helmet. Morgan brought his head down. There, ahead, a tinge of deep red edged a narrow segment of the black Earth. The red brightened rapidly, and broadened. Morgan reached to one side of his helmet and dropped a filter into place; he continued to stare at the sun. * * * * * McNary said, "Ten minutes to passage." Morgan unhooked one of the oxygen cylinders at his belt and said, "We need some practice. We'd better try throwing one of these now; not much time left." He turned sideways and made several throwing motions with his right hand without releasing the cylinder. "Better lean into it more than you would down below. Well, here goes." He pushed the telephone line clear of his right side and leaned back, raising his right arm. He began to lean forward. When it seemed that he must topple, he snapped his arm down and threw the cylinder. The recoil straightened him neatly, and he stood securely upright. The cylinder shot out and down in a straight line and was quickly lost to sight. "Very nice," said McNary. "Good timing. I'll keep mine low too. No sense cluttering the orbits up here with any more junk." Carefully McNary leaned back, leaned forward, and threw. The second cylinder followed the first, and McNary kept his footing. Without speaking Kaufman went through the preliminaries and launched his cylinder. Morgan and McNary watched it speed into the distance. "Shooting stars on Earth tonight," said McNary. "Quick! I'm off." It was Kaufman. [Illustration: "Quick! I'm off!"]