Then the next wing passed, and he could see the port. He was almost there. But the port moved on. He had to get there before the next wing swept by, leaving him to crash into the smooth side, nothing to grip. Too close. Too close!

He was moving in rapidly, the crucial wing swinging towards him, right at him! He threw out his left arm, fending off the rotating wing, deflecting himself towards the laser port, menace and salvation.

The swinging appendage crashed into his arm, sending a jolt up through his shoulder. A moment later he collided headfirst with the hull of the Cosmos. The wing swept him around as the momentum of his impact rolled him into a ball. The force of his thruster kept him against the hull for a moment, but then he dizzily felt as if every force of nature were working against him. The centrifugal force of rotation tugged him inexorably outward, away from the hull. He extended his legs, and the thruster began to push him up along the hull, away from the laser port. He killed the thruster, but could feel himself tilting outward, falling away from the hull. He pushed against the stubby wing and lashed out desperately with his right leg, kicking along the hull until he felt the ominous opening of the laser port.

Only a few minutes had passed, but scarcely a few more had been enough to kill. He simply prayed that he would not somehow trigger a similar blast. He felt the upper side of his boot catch over the rim of the opening, his toe extending inside the port. The friction gave him some anchor, but his upper body tilted away, still at the mercy of the centrifuge.

A hand reached out, and he grabbed at it without thinking. Only after a moment of relief did he realize in horror what it was. No time to think, his boot could slip at any moment. He pulled frantically against the centrifugal force — grabbing hand, forearm, shoulder, then reaching beyond the helmet to grab another handful of suit near the other shoulder. He was too busy to look, too frightened to look, but he caught a glimpse of gaping mouth and eyes staring in perpetual shock. He stuffed his hand into the torch-cut hole, searching for the grip to share with a dead hand.

There! A reinforcing bar! Got to — Finally the infinite sinking relief of a secure handhold.

As he grabbed the fixture within the hole he became aware of the shaking of his leg from tension and too much adrenalin. Sewing machine leg, the rock climbers called it. He forced himself to breathe calmly for a moment. He could not wait for long. He was aware of his appendages as never before. His whole consciousness split and flowed to his left hand wedged against the dead one, gripping some frame member, his right foot, hooked upward, straining to keep a purchase on the rim of the deadly laser port. Would he trigger it? What if it goes off? Is his foot out of the way, or will it be seared from his leg? The terrible centrifugal force, pulling, pulling him away from the side. How did he do it, one-banded, with the Cosmos rotating twice as fast?

Jupp tensed his stomach muscles and slowly drew his dangling left leg in against the outward tug of the artificial gravity. His foot bounced against the hull, and then he slid it downward, trying awkwardly to keep it against the hull until he could reach the stubby wing. It was like hanging from the ceiling and trying to stand on the wall. Finally, he could feel the surface of the wing. There was some friction on the sole of his boot, precarious but precious support against the outward tug.

Slowly, he released his toehold on the laser port. He twisted suddenly, his left foot slipping on the wing. A surge of panic, primordial, fear of falling, ran through him. He forced himself to have confidence in his hand grip and got his left, then right foot planted on the wing. Now the rotating wing offered a floor under his feet, an artificial gravity giving some security against the perilous outward component.

He reached backward for the torch, every move awkward and twisted as if he were on a rapid merry-go-round. He grasped the torch in its clamp on the backpack. He dropped it! The torch slung out to the end of its tether. He grabbed the base of the tether and pulled it around in front of him, extending his arm, letting the tether slip through his hand until he could almost reach the handle of the torch. Then he worked his gloved fingers in cumbersome rhythmic fashion, inching along the tether and on to the handle until he had a firm grip. He pressed the button and the torch sprang to life, a flaring blue ally.

He worked the torch in a loose U shape two feet across below the laser port. The torch sliced the thin metal easily. The chunk of side wall fell away and he could see inside the Cosmos for the first time.

He saw that he would not be able to get through the hole. The bracework for the laser mount obscured the way. He shuffled his feet aside and cut another U extending to the left of the first. As the next piece fell away, he felt his perch shudder. To his right, he could see the cloud emerge from one of the undamaged thrusters. The Cosmos was manoeuvring again! He watched as the rotation carried him around. Yes! They had tilted down slightly towards the shuttle. He had to get inside!

Two heavy braces blocked the new hole. One ran along the side and provided his handhold in the smaller hole above. The bars resisted, but the torch did its work.

He replaced the torch in its clamp and reached inside the freshly— cut hole, seeking and grasping one of the bars supporting the laser. Then he released the grip of his left hand and withdrew it from the upper hole. As he did, the Colonel's hand came loose as well. The head bumped his and the hand slapped against his faceplate, a farewell pat, as the remains swung off into space. The sudden movement jolted Jupp again and he froze motionless for a long moment until he felt the thrusters shift the Cosmos once more. -

Rapidly, he crouched and snaked his left hand in for a grip. He pulled himself inward. God, it was dark! He needed the lamp, but could not release a grip to get it. He pulled again and inched inward but then stopped. Now what giant solid hand blocked his further movement?

The backpack. It was caught on the severed brace. He might cut a hole bit enough for it, but there was probably no room in the confined innards of the satellite. Cool daring descended on him. He had come too far. He adjusted his position until his grip with his left hand was as firm as possible. He transferred the torch and a lamp to fasteners on his suit. Then he began to release the straps and catches with his right hand, working awkwardly but methodically at a job meant for more than two hands. The partially freed backpack swung out tugging on the straps, fighting release. At last he had it. He held onto the final strap for one moment and then let go without a backward glance to see the mechanism spin off to join the severed body in eternity.

He twisted slowly one way then the other, testing for freedom, finding a contortion that allowed motion. He grasped for new handholds and worked his way in headfirst.

Finally! He could feel his feet clear the opening and planted them on the bracework surrounding the hole through which he had entered. He stood, the centrifugal force at last a friend, feet on the wall of the huge cylinder, head towards the centre. He found the lamp and flicked it on. The laser loomed alongside him, a huge enclosed box. There was room to manoeuvre, if just barely, a technician's access space. Elsewhere, equipment, snaking cables, wires, and pipes packed the interior of the satellite.

Now what. Mister brave guy commando? a cynical voice asked. You going to destroy this thing with karate chops?

He felt the satellite shift again, and through the frame around him could sense the flow of peroxide to the jets. Peroxide. The tanks must be somewhere. Could he puncture one with the torch and put the jets out of commission without blowing himself up? He scanned around and could not identify the tanks. They could be anywhere; why wasn't he briefed for this?

Power! If he killed the power, he would stop both radio commands from the ground and the laser. He played the lamp again and located a cable the thickness of his arm coming from the rear of the laser. That had to be the main power supply. He followed the cable around the hull to the point where it disappeared into the bulkhead that had been behind him as he faced the laser.

Stencilled lettering caught his attention, just out of the reach of the lamp. He swung the light and froze. He dimly felt the involuntary release that flowed down the relief tube of his suit. He didn't read Cyrillic, but there was no mistaking the purple and yellow international symbol for radioactivity. Of course, he thought, no solar panels, the thing has to be powered by a nuclear reactor, and no room nor need to shield it in space.

I'm a dead man. The words echoed in his mind as he swung to work. He started with the large cable from the laser, severing it with the torch. Sparks flew, arcing the gap he cut, but he felt no glory in the fireworks, only a grim determination. Then he methodically cut every other cable he could reach from his confined space that might carry electrical power. As he proceeded he could feel the cessation of certain hums and vibrations of which he had not been consciously aware. If it was killing him, he was killing it.

When he could find no more cables intact, he backed out of the hole very slowly so as not to catch his suit. When only his upper torso remained inside, he hooked an elbow around one of the laser braces so that he had a firm hold that would not tire his hands. The centrifugal force tugged his legs straight away from the satellite.

'Larry?'

'Oh, thank god!' Wahlquist's relief came to Jupp as a palpable force over the intercom. 'I wanted to call you but was afraid to spoil your concentration. Control is frantic. I cut them off from you too.'

'Sorry, it must have been rough on you just sitting. I think I've disabled it. I cut the power lines.'

'Control says it's probably nuclear powered. Did you go inside?'

'Yeah, I had to, but only for a little while. I'm fine.' An extended silence echoed with Wahlquist's doubt. Then he spoke. 'Now what?'

'I sure want to get back home. How'd you like to play catcher?'

'How's that?'

'I had to jettison the backpack to get inside. I want you to jockey the bird around where I can just jump into the bay. Can you do that?'

Jupp heard the forced bravado.

'If you can pitch it, I can catch it.'

'Great! Are you at the controls?'

'Yep. I've been feeling around; I'm into it. Talk to me.'

'You're about forty-five degrees from my plane of rotation. This polecat was trying to get you in its sights again, by the way.'

'Thanks, podnuh.'

'Anytime. Let's start simple. Give me a little port roll to get the plane of your wings perpendicular to my rotation. Not too much. Smidgen to the right. Wait'll I go around to get another good look. Just a hair to the left. Okay, that looks pretty good. We'll tune it up later. Now let's see if we can get a parallel lateral shift to the right. You want to hit the front and the rear left thrusters by just the same amount. No. Too much nose! You're moving but spinning. A little right nose! Now some right rear. Let me get my bearings, I can only see you once every twenty seconds. You're still drifting. Give me just a light brush on the right. A little more. Okay, let me watch again for a minute.'

Jupp had realized throughout this exercise that they would never get a perfect alignment, with Wahlquist having no direct visual feedback. They might stop the spin of the shuttle, or the drift, but to get them both stabilized at once was asking too much. He could maximize his chances, but he was still going to have to hit a moving target from a merry-go-round. And he was the projectile.

He spent a few more minutes with Wahlquist until they seemed to have the drift minimized. The shuttle passed before his eyes once every twenty seconds, its open bay yawning a welcome to him. The craft hovered a little below him but had a slight upward drift. It was also in a slow clockwise spin from his perspective. He planned to push off from the Cosmos when he faced at right angles to the shuttle. His inertia from the spinning satellite would carry him sideways towards the bay. The problem was timing. Even if the shuttle were perfectly stationary, he could release too soon and be thrown past the tail; too late and he would sail helplessly past the nose. He could increase the target angle by bringing the shuttle in closer, but then there would be too great a chance of collision.

He waited until the shuttle was pointed with its long axis along his plane of rotation so that he had the best chance of landing in the bay. He worked his body around until his feet were under him. He crouched on the side of the Cosmos and held onto a brace with one hand behind him, like an ungainly swimmer about to begin a race. He waited a minute, three more revolutions, and then as he saw the tail of the shuttle come into view to his extreme left, he pushed off.

He immediately sensed his error, and the panic of falling gripped him again. He had concentrated so hard on timing his leap to the rotation that he had not paid enough attention to pushing straight off from the side of the satellite. He had pushed himself slightly upward, exactly the wrong thing to do with the shuttle a little below him. He felt as if the shuttle were drifting downward, even as he rocketed towards it, arms and legs flailing wildly in ungrippable space. He began to tumble, and as he caught occasional glimpses of the shuttle, he could see the edge of the bay drop below his inexorable path. He steeled himself to see the shuttle float by, his last connection to humanity fading in the vastness of space.

The blow nearly took his breath away, a surprisingly painful rap from his left shoulder blade to his right kidney. As he bounced back, he caught a twisting view of the bay rotating in his line of sight, and then a pole. He spreadeagled, reaching for his life. His left arm and leg hit it; he swung his right arm around, reaching, clawing, grabbing, bugging. And then he was still, legs tightly wrapped around the manipulating boom, his arms clasping it to his bosom. He closed his eyes and listened to the pounding of his heart, racing as never before. The sweat ran stinging rivulets into his eyes, clinched though they were. At last he opened them and looked around. The clamshell door. He had missed the cargo bay, but had collided with the edge of the extended door. He looked at the boom immediately before his eyes. Had it not been for the plastic barrier of his faceplate, he would have kissed it.

He tried to speak, choked, and then tried again.

'Larry?'

'You okay?'

'I'm home. Don't go away; I'll be right in.'

'Hot damn!'

Jupp shinned his way carefully down the boom, and using handholds in the bay, made his way to the airlock. He rotated through and nearly collapsed with relief at being back within the confines of the familiar shuttle cabin. He drifted up through the hatch. Wahlquist was standing next to the pilot's seat, waiting for him, his faceplate up, listening intently, compensating already for his lack of sight. Jupp floated to him and without thinking grasped him in a bearhug. Wahlquist was surprised for a moment, but then responded in kind and the two figures stood for a long moment locked in a cumbersome space-suited embrace.

Finally Jupp felt control return. He held Wahlquist off at arm's length.

'Okay, buddy, we've got work to do. Let's bag that bird and get out of here.'

He guided Wahlquist to the copilot's seat and then settled into the comfortable familiarity of the pilot's seat. He jockeyed the thrusters and loved every response of his craft. He loved his eye-hand coordination, and he loved the total absence of the terrible repellant artificial gravity that dwelt on the object out his window.

He manoeuvred the shuttle until it was beneath the Cosmos once more, craning to see through the window over his head to position the boom. When he was satisfied, he moved to the boom controls at the rear of the flight deck. He released a catch and watched the life-saving mirror drift off to join the other detritus of their mission. Then he raised the boom until it was just beneath the Cosmos. He flipped the switch and set the rotatable stanchion on the end of the boom spinning and with it the payload interface claw. Monitoring the picture from the camera that spun with the claw, he adjusted the speed until the image of the bottom of the Cosmos was fixed, the claw, rotating at exactly the same speed. He then closed the gap to the Cosmos and thrust the claw up into the open wound where the bottom antenna had been. He could feel the shuttle rock as the spinning claw sought a purchase on the satellite and transmitted small torques through the stationary boom. He could see the claw span a frame member and he locked it on.

Now for the tedious part. He had to slowly decrease the speed of the claw. Too fast and he could snap the boom or the brace in the Cosmos with equally disastrous results if the spinning satellite should collide with the main span of the boom. As he decelerated the tremendous angular inertia of the Cosmos, it was transferred to the shuttle, setting it spinning. Jupp called orders to Wahlquist who operated the thrusters to remove the spin.

An hour later the Cosmos and the shuttle were one in motion. Jupp slowly lowered the boom until the Cosmos was just out of the bay,.the jury rigged wings that had abetted his entry blocking the final nesting. With some reluctance he floated back down through the hatch, passed through the airlock, and stared once again at the hulking satellite. He anchored a tether to his suit, pulled a torch from the rack and affixed it to his belt.

He started on the structure with which he had first collided. His skin crawled to see the gaping hole of the laser port, and its smaller, ragged companion where he had found his first grisly hand-hold. He was too fatigued to do more than a butcher job, but it still required fifteen minutes to sever the blunt structure and shove it off into space. He continued around, doing two more in three-quarters of an hour. He was bone tired. He floated back to the deck of the bay and scanned the remains. He was sure he could position the thing to one side of the bay so that the final wing would fit. God help him if it trounced around during re-entry. He hung up the torch, detached the tether and slipped back through the airlock.

More careful manipulation of the boom brought the Cosmos into the bay, the remaining wing just clearing the hinges where the port clamshell would close. He hit the switch and watched the doors swing shut on their captive with the relief of a beleaguered traveller whose suitcase finally closes. He journeyed once again into the bay and secured the huge bulk as well as possible with various cables and clamps.

For a final time he floated upon to the flight deck and buckled himself into the pilot's seat. He programmed the computer and they began the descent to near earth orbit. He suggested to Wahlquist that he discuss with mission control the best mode of re-entry with an evaporated vertical stabilizer, tilted his chair back, and slipped into a heavy sleep.

He awoke fighting the sleep, caught in a fear that if he did not arouse now he never would. He could sense without opening his eyes that the booster was not firing. They were in parking orbit.

'Back in a minute,' he told Wahlquist, as he prised himself out of his chair. Down on the operations deck he stripped off his gloves and undid his helmet. He went to the medicine cabinet and washed down a couple of Benzedrine tablets. Wouldn't do to sleep through re-entry.

Back in the pilot's seat, he listened intently to Wahlquist. They had immediately concluded that a routine landing at the Cape was out of the question. Emergency crews were assembling on the dry lake expanses of Edwards Air Force Base in the Mohave. Part of the vertical stabilizer was still intact and the guess was that it would provide sufficient stability during re-entry. The problem was that manoeuvring in the atmosphere would be severely hampered. They could make some gentle turns with judicious use of wing spellers, but without the rudder a proper coordinated turn was impossible. Not a job for computers: no programs were written for laser-blasted equipment. Jupp had to fly. He'd known that as he fell asleep, and as he had pawed for the stimulant.

His senses were keen as they did the final burn to start their descent. They began in standard orbital orientation, upside down, rockets pointed in their direction of travel. The rockets thrusted and they dropped into an ever lower, ever faster trajectory. As they entered the atmosphere, they flipped over to the normal atmospheric configuration, nose forward, tiled belly down into the heat. Jupp immediately felt the vibration. Something was wrong with the damaged tail. The mangled remains of the rudder still clung to the lower portion of the vertical stabilizer. The vibration grew to a teeth-clattering shudder. Jupp felt a cool wisp of irony amidst his fear. They would die now together, the shuttle and the Cosmos, after being through so much.

His mind raced, scenes of childhood, his technician's sense wondering what would give out first, a wing come off, a rupture in the hull? Then in a heartbeat it was gone. The shorn rudder succumbed to its own lack of aerodynamic perfection. The tremendous heat of re-entry ablated and then finally swept it away.

They came out of radio blackout only fifty miles off course. Jupp applied a little spoiler. Not the most perfect turn, his flight instructor would have washed him out had the ball drifted that much in training, but they were back on course. There were the chase planes. God, they were lovely! There was the strip. No graceful turns for position, they were going right down the pipe.

He was going to miss the painted centre stripe by a quarter mile, but he couldn't worry about that. Without the capacity for a coordinated turn he could not risk a destabilizing crab this close to the ground. A bit too hot, too. Can't be helped. Flaps down. Gear down. Nose up, drop the forward speed as much as possible. Wasn't this strip supposed to be long? Isn't that the warning marker? Nose higher, ease her down. Now, nose down, even her up, here we go, flare, flare! Down, bounce, down, down, DOWN!

Jupp heard the ground crew swarm over the craft. He began the post-flight shutdown, responding automatically to prompts from ground control. We're down, he thought. We made it. We brought the son-of-a-bitch back. I should feel happy. I do feel happy. He looked over at Wahlquist. Below the sightless eyes was a wide, relieved grin.

Then he felt the first grip of nausea.