below the orbit of the bird we were chasing.

"Can't have both ends of the stick, Mike," Sid explained, calling me
by name for the first time. "As soon as we slowed down we had to drop
lower." He fooled around with the steering jets, which were
hydrazine-nitric acid rockets much like the tiny motors on my suit,
and re-oriented _Nelly Bly_. A little burst from the nose, and I got
my first blip.

"There!" I said, putting a finger on the PPI. "Turn out the light,
Sid, so I can see the 'scope'."

He switched off the cabin light and followed my directions with tiny
shoves, sometimes from the rockets, sometimes from the steering jets,
while I conned us closer.

Our radar would only read within about half a mile. When we got that
close I got the searchlight going and took my first real look through
the forward port out into space.

It's black. Nothing--nothing you have ever seen will persuade you how
dark it is out there. That was my first big shock. Oh, I had practiced
in the dark, with only my helmet light to guide my tests and
assemblies, but this was a different kind of dark. Our light had no
visible beam--you couldn't even tell it was working. At first I had
the idea we'd see the satellite occulting some stars, but a little
mental arithmetic told me that an object six or eight feet in section
would not subtend much of an angle of vision at half a mile.

We had chosen, I decided, much too narrow a beam of light for the
searchlight, but just at that moment I got a flash from out in space,
and worked the light back on to our objective.

"Got it," I said.

"Yoicks!" Sid said, and went back to the fine controls. After a long
time, and lots of patience, we were hanging about fifty feet out from
our bird. We were farther out in space so that the dark bulk of the
satellite was silhouetted against the crescent light of Earth. I
turned off the spot and switched on the floodlight.

"Here goes nothing, Sid," I said, and undid the dogs that held the
canopy above our heads.

My earphone spoke to me: "This is Cleary. Do you read me, Mike?"

I fumbled around to find the right jack and plugged myself into the
radio. "Yes, Paul. Loud and clear."

"Watch yourself. Think first. You've got all the time in the world."

"Sure."

"Sylvia would miss you," he added.

I hoped he was right.

* * * * *

Clinging carefully to the handholds that had been specially provided
on the outside of _Nelly B