o suit him. It was a large can. He knelt with
it, pressing a part of it to the hot metal of the satellite's hull. A
moment later he was ripping it apart. The solder had softened. He
unrolled a sort of cylinder, then bent again, using the curved inner
surface to concentrate the intolerable sunshine.

Joe caught his breath at the implication. Concentrated sunshine can be
incredibly hot. Starting with unshielded, empty-space sunshine,
practically any imaginable temperature is possible with a large enough
mirror. Mike didn't have a concave mirror. He had only a cylindrical
one. He couldn't reflect light to a point, but only to a line. Mike
couldn't hope to do more than double or triple the temperature of a
given spot. But considering what he wore on his back--!

Joe made his way clumsily to the spot where Mike now gesticulated to
Haney, trying to convey his meaning by gestures since Sanford would
overhear any spoken word.

"I get it, Mike," said Joe. "I'll help." He added: "Chief! You watch
Sanford. The rest of you try to flatten out some tin cans or find some
with flat round ends!"

He reached the spot where Mike bent over the plating. His hand moved to
cast a shadow where the light had played.

"I need more reflectors," Mike said brusquely, "but we can do it!"

Joe beckoned. There were more, hurried clankings. Space-suited figures
gathered about.

The Platform rolled on through space. Where it was bright it was very,
very bright, and where it was dark it was blackness. Off in emptiness
the many-colored mass of Earth shone hugely, rolling past. Innumerable
incurious stars looked on. The sun flamed malevolently. The moon floated
abstractedly far away.

Mike was bent above a small round airlock door. He had a distorted
half-cylinder of sheet tin between his space-gloved hands. It reflected
a line of intensified sunlight to the edge of the airlock seal. Haney
ripped fiercely at other tin cans. Joe held another strip of polished
metal. It focused crudely--very crudely--on top of Mike's line of
reflected sunshine. Someone else held the end of a tin can to reflect
more sunshine. Someone else had a larger disk of tin.

They stood carefully still. It looked completely foolish. There were six
men in frozen attitudes, trying to reflect sunshine down to a single
blindingly-bright spot on an airlock door. They seemed breathlessly
tense. They ignored the glories of the firmament. They were utterly
absorbed in trying to make