kly in a rapidly rising sense of reckless abandon that
possessed him. The prospect of positive action of any sort served to
release any tension left in him and almost gayly he moved to set his
plan in action.

He jimmied the timer on the rocket motor so it would fire to the last
drop. The string of ribbon chutes he reeled in hand over hand stuffing
it into the cylinder, discovering in the process why the chute Section
hands at Base wore that harried look. The mass of slithering,
incompressible white-and-yellow ribbon and its shrouds resisted him like
a live thing; in the end Johnny managed to bat and maul the obstreperous
stuff down the length of the tank. Even so, it filled it to within a
couple of inches of the opening.

[Illustration]

Now he cut off a length of his life line and attached one end to the
spring-loaded trigger release on the motor control, leaving enough to
trail the length of the cylinder and double back inside when he wanted
it. He blessed the economically minded powers that insisted on manual
firing control on these one-shot units instead of the complex radio
triggers beloved of the technical brains.

Making fast to the chutes was a major problem but eventually he managed
a makeshift harness of the remainder of the safety line. He wound it
awkwardly around himself with as many turns as possible, each returned
again and again through, the ring at the end of the master shroud.

By now he was casting anxious glances at the Earth below, aware that he
must have passed apogee several minutes before and that not more than
some twenty minutes were left before the low point of this swing would
be near. He was grimly aware also that it must be this time or not at
all. The air telltale was well through the yellow band and the next
possible chance after this one was an hour's time away, when conditions
inside the suit would be getting pretty sticky.

Jockeying the unwieldy cylinder into line of flight and making it stay
there took a lot longer than Johnny counted on. With no other manual
purchase than that afforded by his own lesser mass, the job proved
almost impossible and he had to use his suit motor. This caused some
concern over his meager fuel supply since his plan called for some
flat-out jetting later on. In the frantic flurry of bending, twisting,
over and under--controlling, the veneer of aplomb began to wear. Johnny
was sweating freely by the time he had the cylinder stabilized as best
he coul