"I will not ask why," Krylov said flatly, "that is known only to your miserable self." He waited. When Diavilev did not speak his voice came again quickly.
"Have you nothing to say, idiot? No epitaph, no begging?"
His voice had become too loud and Diavilev turned the radio down.
"A German checked your figures, Diavilev. Do you understand? A German who is now dead found you out, fool. Your trajectory was radioed to Earth and checked and corrected, and the meteor will not fall in the ocean, Diavilev. It will land on the capitol of the United States!
"And you will be on it. All the way down you will be on it. Is that not a fitting end? We are a great people, Diavilev, a poetic and powerful people. Is your ending not poetic?..."
Diavilev rose wearily and clambered up the iron walls to a higher place, a place from which he could see the sun. Krylov was beginning to rave, working himself into a frenzy. Diavilev turned him off, waited patiently in the black silence.
There was nothing heroic about him. If he had it to do now he would not do it at all, but it was fixed and irrevocable and now he would have to wait, afraid and unutterably lonely, until the end.
The stars above him were a billion icy eyes.
After a while there was a flash, and the moonlet kicked under his feet.
He held on as the metal rocked. He waited, waited, waited, until he could feel it beginning to fall. Then he took a deep breath and spoke: