lock, a moment's unpleasantness perhaps, and
out. As for the rest--a spaceman needs no sanctified ground, the
incorruptible vault of space is as good a place as any and perhaps the
more fitting for one of the first to travel its ways.

Well then--quickly. Johnny raised his hands.

But still--

Man has his pride and his vanity. Johnny, though not necessarily prone
to inflated valuation of himself still has just enough vanity left to
resent the thought of this anonymous snuffing out in the dark. There
should be, he thought, at least some outward evidence of his passing,
something like--a flare of light perhaps, that would in effect say, if
only to one solitary star gazer: "Here at this position, at this
instant, Johnny Melland, Spaceman, had his time."

The whimsy persisted. Johnny, casting about mentally for some means to
the end recalled the thermite bomb for the WD cylinder and was hauling
himself in to it when he remembered the charges for this lot had gone up
with Sally Uncle One two days before. But now he'd actually touched the
metal cylinder and, as though the brief contact had completed some
obscure mental circuit, the mad idea was conceived, flared up into an
irrepressible brilliance and exploded in a harsh bark of laughter.

One last push to his luck then, hardly worse than a gambler's last chip
except that the consequences of failure were somewhat more certain.
Either way he'd have what he wanted--survival or, in the brief
incandescence of friction's heat, a declaration of his passing.

A waste disposal cylinder will carry the equivalent of about three tons
of refuse. Its motor is designed to decelerate that mass by 1,075 mph in
order to allow it to assume a descending orbit.

Less the greater part of the customary mass, it should be considerably
more effective, and since he was already in what constituted a descent
path, but for a few miles and a little extra velocity, there would not
be the long fall afterwards to pick up what he'd lost.

* * * * *
From there on his plan entered the realm of pure hypothesis; except for
the broad detail the rest depended on luck and whatever freakish
conditions might arise in his favor during the operation. These, too,
would be beyond his control and any move to take advantage of them would
have to be instinctive, providing he was in any shape to do so.

The tendency to gnaw worriedly at a thousand disturbing possibilities
drowned quic