Kinsman's whole body jerked at the urgency in Colt's voice. "What? What is it?"

"Lookit the orbiter!"

Turning so rapidly that he bounced the upper corner of his MMU against the tank. Kinsman peered out at the ship, some two hundred meters away from them.

"They've closed the payload bay doors. Why the hell would they do that?"

Colt jetted down the length of the tank, stopping himself neatly as an ice skater within arm's reach of Kinsman. "What on earth are they doing?" Kinsman wondered. Colt said, "Whatever it is, I don't like it." Suddenly a puff of white gas jetted from the orbiter's nose. The spacecraft dipped down and away from them. Another soundless gasp from the maneuvering thrusters back near the tail.

"What the fuck are they up to?" Colt shouted. The orbiter was sliding away from them, scuttling crab- wise farther and farther from the tank farm where they were stranded.

"They got trouble! Somethin's gone wrong ..." Kinsman punched the stud on his wrist for the flight deck's radio frequency.

"Kinsman to flight deck. What's wrong? Why are you maneuvering?"

No answer. The orbiter was dwindling away from them rapidly.

"Jesus Christ!" Colt yelled. "They're gonna leave us here!"

"Captain Howard!" Kinsman said into his helmet mike, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. "Major Podolski! Major Pierce! Anybody! Come in. This is Kinsman. Colt and I are still EVA! Answer, please!"

Nothing but the crackling hum of the radio's carrier wave.

"Those sonsofbitches are stranding us!"

Kinsman watched the orbiter getting smaller and smaller. It seemed to be hurtling madly away from them, although the rational part of his mind told him that the spacecraft was only drifting now. It had only fired the vernier thrusters, not the rocket motors that would move it into an altogether different orbital plane. But the difference in relative velocities between the tank farm and the orbiter was enough to make the two fly apart from each other.

Colt was moving. Kinsman saw that he was lining himself up for a dash toward the dwindling orbiter. Grabbing Colt's arm to stop him, Kinsman snapped, "NO!" Then he realized his suit radio was still on the flight deck frequency. Banging the stud on his wrist, he said, "Don't panic. Remember? That's what Howard warned us about."

"We gotta get back to the orbiter! We can't hang here!"

"You'll never reach the orbiter with the MMU," Kins- man said. "They're separating from us too fast."

"But something's gone wrong . . ."

Kinsman looked out toward the dwindling speck that was the orbiter. It was hard to see it now, against the glaring white of the Earth. They were passing over the vast cloud-covered Antarctica. Shuddering, Kinsman felt the cold seeping into him.

"Listen to me," he commanded. "Maybe nothing's gone wrong. Maybe this is their idea of a joke."

"A joke?"

"That's what Howard was trying to teil us." Kinsman silently added, Maybe.

"That's crazy!"

"Is it? They've been sticking it to us all through the mission, haven't they? Pierce is a snotty bastard; this looks like something he might cook up. What would he like better than watching the two of us chasing the damned orbiter until the fuel in our MMUs gives out and they have to come back and rescue us?"

"You don't joke around with lives, man!"