For ten years he'd been one of the top astronauts of the nation--ever since he had risen to fame as the genius who had developed a certain method of converting nuclear energy directly into electricity. In those days he'd been a poorly paid instructor at some obscure mid-western college. Now he was famous as a spaceman, and wealthy from his discoveries. His apparent nervousness lasted only an instant. Then he became his cold self again. Not that it served to reassure anybody--we all knew that northeast of where we stood, far out over the Atlantic, Willy's capsule was screaming into the atmosphere. It mattered little that the parachutes were open, since the men who had been watching the instruments recording Willy's heartbeat said he had been hurt badly. There was no button to push, no knob to turn, no switch to flip which would make everything A-okay. And there certainly was no magic wand to break the evil enchantment of the moment. The loud-speaker squawked out a report from the Navy carrier. Its helicopters were airborne, attempting to reach the place where Willy would come down, but they were hundreds of miles west--at the place where Willy would have come down after his next lap, not this one. Then there was an awful silence, broken only by a sob from Gail. Spartan looked down at her, his lips curling with displeasure. She clasped her hands to her face and swayed in her chair. Spartan growled with annoyance, then turned his head and saw me. "Drake!" he bellowed. He gestured a slim finger toward Gail. "Get that hysterical woman out of here!" I didn't like the way he gave the order, but it made sense and I started forward to obey. Gail jerked her hands away from her face and turned toward him. She stopped her swaying, turned her eyes on Dr. Spartan and tilted her chin upward with indignation. "I'm _not_ hysterical! I've never been hysterical!" "Take her outside, Drake," said Dr. Spartan, as if she'd never spoken. It did seem like the best idea. Every dial in front of her was an instrument of torture. Whatever happened to Willy Zinder, she believed it to be her fault. I stepped forward and took Gail by the arm. "Please come," I said. "There's nothing you can do." She jerked her arm out of my grip, then got up by herself. "Willy must have misunderstood me," she said. Suddenly her shoulders sagged. "Yes, Bill Drake, I'll go. You're right. There's nothing I can do." Her eyes were moist but her voice was firm. She was not crying like a hysterical woman. I believe that, at that moment, if there was anything she could have done, she would have done it as efficiently as anyone in that room, including Dr. Spartan. She let me take her arm again as I guided her through the door, out of the bunker and into the refreshing warmth of the outside air.