4


There was a babbling of angry, strained, tense voices in Joe's
headphones. Then the Chief roared for silence. It fell, save for
Sanford's quiet, hysterical chuckling. Joe found himself rather absurdly
thinking that Sanford was not actually insane, except as any man may be
who believes only in his own cleverness. Sooner or later it is bound to
fail him. On Earth, Sanford's pride in his own intellect had been
useful. He had been brilliant because he accepted every problem and
every difficulty as a challenge. But with the Platform's situation
seemingly hopeless, he'd been starkly unable to face the fact that he
wasn't clever or brilliant or intelligent enough. If Joe's solution to
the proximity fuse bombs had been offered before his emotional collapse,
he could have accepted it grandly, and in so doing have made it his own.
But it was too late for that now. He'd given up and worked up a frantic
scorn for the universe he could not cope with. For Joe's trick to work
would have made him inferior even to Joe in his own view. And he
couldn't have that! Even to die, with the prospect that others would
survive him, was an intolerable prospect. He had to be smarter than
anybody else.

So he chuckled. The Chief roared wrathfully into his transmitter:
"Quiet! This crazy fool's tried to commit suicide for all of us! How
about it? Why can't we get back in? How many locks----"

Joe found himself thinking hard. He could be angry later. Now there