McCauley gave Furness water. He did not comment on the complications Furness' injury added to a landing problem that was already complicated enough. Instead, he looked at the clock.
"We're close to Antarctica now," he observed. "We ought to run into moonlight, too."
He peered out of a port. The tiny lighted cabin swam in emptiness, without sound, without sight of anything but remote and indifferent stars. It floated above the part of the world where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans flow together, and where there is unbroken sea all around the antarctic continent. A wind can blow completely around the world there, and rather frequently it does; and the gigantic waves that are engendered are spoken of with aversion by seamen. But McCauley could not see any waves. There was floating ice below, but as he thought of it it changed to the massive ice sheet of the bottom of the world. So the tiny lighted cabin raced over mountains and plains all buried in snow which had been there since the beginning.
He turned from the sight of a universe divided into stars and blackness. There was no practical measure to be taken—not now, anyhow. McCauley might contrive a way to get himself safely down to earth, letting Furness take his own chance with no strength to help himself. It seemed improbable in the extreme that Furness could survive a crash landing, even if no explosion followed. There was very little hope that the X-21 could be landed save in a crash. But it did not occur to McCauley that he was relieved of responsibility. A normal landing was not really hoped for. If McCauley piloted the X-21 into orbit and out again, he'd have done the unprecedented and the next try might go better. But he could not imagine himself leaving Furness in a ship headed for a landing that was bound to be a pile-up....
He couldn't expect to land intact himself, with his pilot chute ripped out and torn apart.
"I'm sorry you tore up your pilot chute," said Furness. "It about kills your chance of getting down to the ground in one piece. And it's my fault. You tore it up for me. But when I came on the ship I didn't think I was hurt badly."
"I'd have done just what you did," said McCauley. "It would have taken two broken legs to keep me from walking over as if nothing had happened to me." Then he remembered. "Report?"
Furness gathered his strength and spoke in an almost natural voice:
"X-21 reporting. We are over Antarctica at the farthest south part of our orbit. Altitude...."
He went through the list, and then his eyes went to the canteen from which McCauley had given him water. McCauley gave him another drink.