"Now, fasten your reamer to the rope," commanded McCauley. "Tie on your other tools. Give me every bit of equipment you've got except your air tanks."
"Y-yes, sir," said Sammy's voice in the helmet phones.
Spinning as they were, the universe of stars and sun and the vast, unfamiliar, brilliantly lighted object which was Earth seemed to be engaged in a monstrous saraband. Now Sammy was a glaringly bright object with full, blazing sunshine hitting his space suit. Again he was lighted from the side with the brightness of Earth behind him, racing past his body with all its features blurred. Yet again the stars seemed not points of light but streaks, and there were moments when the sun itself was a flashing band of intolerable brightness. But somehow this vast and silent motion of the cosmos seemed unreal. It was like a hallucination. It was like a nightmare in which absolutely nothing was true; in which there was no actual sun or Earth or stars, because in reality those things did not swing in lunatic sweeps around anybody, anywhere.
While the younger man blindly obeyed McCauley, they continued to drift away toward infinity. Curiously enough, the centrifugal force caused by their spinning gave McCauley the only sensation of weight that he'd had since his arrival at the orbit of the Platform.
Randy's voice came in McCauley's headphones.
"Ed! My God!"
His tone was anguished and hopeless.
"Randy," said McCauley in clipped tones. "You can be useful. When we're in line with you, say 'tip.' Say it again. Keep it up."
Almost instantly Randy said, "Tip." Then, "Tip." Then, "Tip" again. Sammy Breen said hoarsely:
"All my equipment, sir, is fastened to your space rope. Everything but my air tanks."