ilot can feel it. Your instruments can't.
There was no failure, there. The shut-off worked perfectly and
Campbell was killed because of it."

I watched the tracking screen, listened to the high keening noises
coming from the receivers. The computers clicked rapidly, feeding out
triangulated data on the positions of the escape vehicle and the
capsule. The capsule had been diverted from its path slightly by
reaction to the vehicle's ejection. Its speed, however, was increasing
as it moved farther out. The vehicle with Lynds was in a path
parabolic to the capsule, almost like the start of an orbit, but at a
fantastic distance. He was, of course, traveling at escape velocity or
better, and you do not orbit at escape velocity.

* * * * *

"Harry. Harry, how long was I out?" We heard Lynds' voice come alive
suddenly through the crackling static.

"Hello, Dennis. Listen to me. How are you?"

"I'm fine, Harry. What's wrong? How long was I out?"

"Nothing is wrong. You were out less than half a minute. The ejection
gear worked perfectly."

"That's good." The tension left his voice and he settled back to a
checking and rechecking of instruments, reactions and what he would
see. They activated the scanner. The transmitting equipment brought us
a view that was little more than a spotty blackness. But I think the
equipment was not working properly. You see, what Lynds said did not
quite match what we saw. They later used the recording of his voice
together with an affidavit sworn to by a technician that our receiver
was operating perfectly, as evidence in my hearing. They proved, in
their own way, that Lynds had suffered continual delirium after
blacking out. The speed, they said, was the cause. It became known as
Danger V. Nobody ever bothered to explain why I never encountered the
phenomenon of Danger V. It became official record, and my experience
was the deviant. It was Bannister's alibi.

We watched the spotty blackness on the screen and listened to Lynds.

"Harry, I can see it all pretty well now," he began. "There's slight
spin on this bomb so it comes and goes. About sixty second
revolutions. Nice and slow. Terribly nauseating to look at. But I'm
feeling fine now, better than fine. Give me a stick and I'll move the
Earth. Who was it said that? Clever fellow. You say I was out about
half a minute. That makes it about three more minutes until
Bannister's controls are supposed to bring