He'd have to find something else, Pappas decided. This whole Belden business was pretty provincial, anyway. And as for Birkerod, Garcia, and those people—! Pappas dismissed Callisto from his thoughts completely. There would have to be some angle on the inner planets.
After several hours of thought on the subject, he took stock of his situation again. The disk of Earth was a little larger, he thought, but not enough so you'd notice it. He pulled the semi-opaque visor over his faceplate and went to sleep.
He slept for ten days.
Not Earth days, however. When Pappas went to sleep the Sun was behind him. He thought he had eliminated his rotation, but actually he was tumbling head over heels, extremely slowly. Thus, for him, the Sun rose between his feet and set directly "above" him.
The eleventh of these "sunrises" woke him. He stayed awake, because as soon as he flipped his visor up and looked around him the Earth caught his eye. It was much closer. He did not know how to measure its angular diameter, so he couldn't calculate his distance from it even approximately, but it looked enormous.
How long had his nap lasted? The spacesuit's chronometer was running. Its minute hand indicated 37; its hour hand, 15; its day hand, 3. That would have told him how long he'd slept, if he'd read the chronometer before he went to sleep; but he hadn't. All he knew was that he'd slept much longer than he'd expected, and long enough to get painfully stiff.
In any case, he'd covered a lot of distance. As much as the Tang would have covered in the same time, he realized. He was approaching Earth pretty fast.
"Too fast," he added aloud, nervously. He'd have to decelerate before he got there or the parachute wouldn't do him any good. Now, was it time yet to start decelerating? If he directed the hand reaction motor in the wrong direction now, could it cause him to miss Earth? He guessed not: the planet looked so close, any small "sidewise" push he gave himself could hardly hurt. Once he killed his speed, Earth's gravitational field would gather him in.
Pappas took out the reaction motor. Using low power, he turned himself till he faced Earth. The planet seemed to have swelled just in the time since he'd waked up. He set the reaction motor to full power, grasped it with both hands, held it in front of his chest, and pointed it straight at Earth. Then he pressed the button and held it down.