When they took him out of his suit he was apparently unconscious. He
could not be roused. Freed, he drew his knees up to his chin in the
position in which primitive peoples bury their dead. He seemed to sleep.
Brent examined him carefully.

"Catatonia," he said distastefully. "He spent his life thinking he was
smarter than anybody else--smarter, probably, than all the universe. He
believed it. He couldn't face the fact that he was wrong. He couldn't
stay conscious and not know it. So he's blacked out. He refuses to be
anything unless he can be smartest. We'll have to do artificial feeding
and all that until we can get him down to Earth to a hospital." He
shrugged.

"We'd better report this down to Earth," Joe said. "By the way, better
not describe our screen of tin cans on radio waves. Not even microwaves.
It might leak. And we want to see if it works."

Just forty-two hours later they found out that it did work. A single
rocket came climbing furiously out from Earth. It came from the
night-side, and they could not see where it was launched, though they
could make excellent guesses. They got a single guided missile ready to
crash it if necessary.

It wasn't necessary. The bomb from Earth detonated 300 miles below the
artificial satellite. Its proximity fuse, sending out small radar-type
waves, had them reflected back by an empty sardine can thrown away from
the Platform by Mike Scandia forty-some hours ago. The sardine can had
been traveling in its own private orbit ever since. The effect of Mike's
muscles had not been to send it back to Earth, but to change the center
of the circular orbit in which it floated. Sometimes it floated above