ly_, I clambered through the hatch and hung
in the darkness, looking down at South America. The world was turning
visibly under me, although I knew that in fact we were skimming
rapidly about three thousand miles over its surface. I got myself
lined up nice and straight with the bird and did my first bit of
non-thinking. I pushed off good and proper with my feet, the way you'd
dive into a swimming pool. It was a fool stunt for my first act. I was
doing a good five or six feet a second. You may not think that is very
fast, but before I could gulp twice I had zipped past that bird and
was headed for Buenos Aires.

I know I screamed. That was the first time I realized I really was
falling. Earth looked awfully close, and seemed to be rushing up to
meet me.

My orientation was all wrong for stopping. By diving head first I had
neither my back nor my belly rocket lined up to stop me.

My training failed completely. I tried to squirm straight, and by
proper swinging of my arms out to full length, and kicking the same
way with my feet, I got turned around to where my belly was facing the
floodlight on _Nelly Bly_. That's not how I was supposed to do it.

The glider had disappeared--all I could see was the floodlight. It was
still by far the brightest thing in the sky, but if I drifted much
longer, I would have to use radio direction-finding to get back. I
triggered the motor on my back and felt its gentle push against my
spine.

"Sid!" I called.

"Roger, Mike!"

"Light the tip lights. I've got to get a fix on my velocity. I went
way past and I'm trying to get back."

Two new stars winked into being, on either side of the floodlight.
This had been some bright guy's idea, and it was paying off. I kept
watching the apparent distance between them shrink as I continued my
trip toward Earth. Memory and a little calculating told me that my
acceleration of three inches per second per second would take twenty
seconds of blast to slow me to a stop. I counted them off, aloud:
"Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three," as I had been
taught to measure seconds. When I got to Mississippi twenty my visual
measurement said I was about stationary with regard to _Nelly Bly_.

I used a little more blast and let a couple minutes go by while I
drifted closer to the Telstar. I started squirming again, until I
remembered to use the deflection plate they had given me to hold in my
belly blast, and that got me lined up. But fina