... who was not there. "Krylov!" Emptiness. He turned and ran back, beginning to understand. In the lack of gravity he almost threw himself out into space, caught hold of a spur and pulled himself down. "Krylov!" He sat down. There was no need to call again. He lifted his head and looked once again through the glass of his helmet at the clean, brilliant stars. "_Idiot._" It was Krylov's voice, flat and dispassionate, coming through the radio in his helmet. Diavilev shuddered. "Did you think we trusted you? Did you think that we did not know your kind can never be trusted? Did you think you could _fool_ us?" Diavilev did not answer. "I will not ask why," Krylov said flatly, "that is known only to your miserable self." He waited. When Diavilev did not speak his voice came again quickly. "Have you nothing to say, idiot? No epitaph, no begging?" His voice had become too loud and Diavilev turned the radio down. "A German checked your figures, Diavilev. Do you understand? A German who is now dead found you out, fool. Your trajectory was radioed to Earth and checked and corrected, and the meteor will not fall in the ocean, Diavilev. It will land on the capitol of the United States! "And you will be on it. All the way down you will be on it. Is that not a fitting end? We are a great people, Diavilev, a poetic and powerful people. Is your ending not poetic?..." Diavilev rose wearily and clambered up the iron walls to a higher place, a place from which he could see the sun. Krylov was beginning to rave, working himself into a frenzy. Diavilev turned him off, waited patiently in the black silence. There was nothing heroic about him. If he had it to do now he would not do it at all, but it was fixed and irrevocable and now he would have to wait, afraid and unutterably lonely, until the end. The stars above him were a billion icy eyes. After a while there was a flash, and the moonlet kicked under his feet. He held on as the metal rocked. He waited, waited, waited, until he could feel it beginning to fall. Then he took a deep breath and spoke: "Krylov." "Goodbye." "Krylov," Diavilev said quietly, "listen, my army friend. You gave me a problem. The problem had two parts. Two parts, army man. And if the first part is wrong the other does not matter." At the other end of the radio, borne through space and the rushing emptiness, Diavilev sensed the beginning of fear. He was able to smile. "What?..." came faintly. "When you checked the trajectory, did you also bring some German up to compute the size of the moonlet all over again?" Nothing. Diavilev chuckled. "You didn't, did you, Krylov?" There was nothing on the radio but an aching, brittle static. "You used the speed _I_ gave you; you used the mass _I_ gave you. The moon will not fall on America, Krylov."