Krotzer held the radar mike, his lips moving monotonously.
It must have smelled terrible in there.
Space was the monster that had got Krotzer and the crew of the Galileo, moving in on them with icy probings until one of them had cracked.
Bailey felt a hand on his shoulder. Fry had arrived. The medic gazed into the dome. They went over and sat near DiCredico.
"We may as well go in and get him," said their skipper. "Try to be easy on him."
Matt Bailey felt something breaking inside his chest. Maybe it would grow back, maybe it wouldn't.
... They felt something breaking inside his chest in all the rooms in Minnesota and Bloomsbury and Hong Kong, and then there was a separation and they were no longer Bailey but themselves, watching a thin man stand up beside a desk.
"I am Wilson Bonner of World Tele," he said. "You have just witnessed the world's first kinevision broadcast, and you may have your brains back. Practically everybody on earth tonight was Matt Bailey—although there is really no Matt Bailey at all.
"Perhaps you expected something more pleasant from your first kinevision, and your government owes you an explanation. You are aware of the progress of space flight research. We have achieved planetary escape. There is wild optimism. The space ministry has been swamped, clogged, with space-ship volunteers.
"It was time for realism.