Mike was fumbling tin cans out of the net bag from which Haney had been throwing them away. He was a singular small figure, standing on shining steel, looking at one tin can after another and impatiently putting them aside.
He found one that seemed to suit him. It was a large can. He knelt with it, pressing a part of it to the hot metal of the satellite's hull. A moment later he was ripping it apart. The solder had softened. He unrolled a sort of cylinder, then bent again, using the curved inner surface to concentrate the intolerable sunshine.
Joe caught his breath at the implication. Concentrated sunshine can be incredibly hot. Starting with unshielded, empty-space sunshine, practically any imaginable temperature is possible with a large enough mirror. Mike didn't have a concave mirror. He had only a cylindrical one. He couldn't reflect light to a point, but only to a line. Mike couldn't hope to do more than double or triple the temperature of a given spot. But considering what he wore on his back—!
Joe made his way clumsily to the spot where Mike now gesticulated to Haney, trying to convey his meaning by gestures since Sanford would overhear any spoken word.
"I get it, Mike," said Joe. "I'll help." He added: "Chief! You watch Sanford. The rest of you try to flatten out some tin cans or find some with flat round ends!"
He reached the spot where Mike bent over the plating. His hand moved to cast a shadow where the light had played.
"I need more reflectors," Mike said brusquely, "but we can do it!"
Joe beckoned. There were more, hurried clankings. Space-suited figures gathered about.
The Platform rolled on through space. Where it was bright it was very, very bright, and where it was dark it was blackness. Off in emptiness the many-colored mass of Earth shone hugely, rolling past. Innumerable incurious stars looked on. The sun flamed malevolently. The moon floated abstractedly far away.
Mike was bent above a small round airlock door. He had a distorted half-cylinder of sheet tin between his space-gloved hands. It reflected a line of intensified sunlight to the edge of the airlock seal. Haney ripped fiercely at other tin cans. Joe held another strip of polished metal. It focused crudely—very crudely—on top of Mike's line of reflected sunshine. Someone else held the end of a tin can to reflect more sunshine. Someone else had a larger disk of tin.