fifty-mile fall?
Same as a fifty thousand mile fall, I suppose; same as escape;
twenty-four thousand miles an hour. I'll make a mess ...

* * * * *

"That's better. Why didn't I close my eyes before? Those star streaks
made me dizzy. I'll make a nice shooting star when I hit air. Come to
think of it, I must be deep in air now. Let's take a look.

"It's getting lighter. Look at those peaks down there! Like great
knives. I don't seem to be falling as fast as I expected though. Almost
seem to be floating. Let's switch on the radio and tell the world hello.
Hello, earth ... hello, again ... and good-by ...

"Sorry about that. I passed out. I don't know what I said, if anything,
and the suit recorder has no playback or eraser. What must have happened
is that the suit ran out of oxygen, and I lost consciousness due to
anoxia. I dreamed I switched on the radio, but I actually switched on
the emergency tank, thank the Lord, and that brought me round.

"Come to think of it, why not crack the suit and breath fresh air
instead of bottled?

"No. I'd have to get up to do that. I think I'll just lie here a little
bit longer and get properly rested up before I try anything big like
standing up.

"I was telling about the return journey, wasn't I? The long jump back
home, which should have dumped us between the orbits of Earth and Mars.
Instead of which, when James took his finger off the button, the
mass-detector showed nothing except the noise-level of the universe.

"We were out in that no place for a day. We astronomers had to establish
our exact position relative to the solar system. The crew had to find
out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes in
front of meters and mutter about residual folds in stress-free space.
Our task was easy, because we were about half a light-year from the sun.
The crew's job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than
half an hour.

"It still seems incredible. To program the ship for a star-jump, you
merely told it where you were and where you wanted to go. In practical
terms, that entailed first a series of exact measurements which had to
be translated into the somewhat abstruse co-ordinate system we used
based on the topological order of mass-points in the galaxy. Then you
cut a tape on the computer and hit the button. Nothing was wrong with
the computer. Nothing was wrong with the engines. We'd hit the right
button and w