board. Lights flickered and rippled across the panel; needles on various meters wavered and jumped. MacIlheny watched for several seconds before he said: "Blake! What the hell's wrong there?" Blake watched a set of oscilloscopes, four green-glowing screens which traced and re-traced bright yellow-green lines across their surfaces. His dark brows lowered over his eyes. "We can't get anything to her, Mac. She's dead. Either that meteor hit her power supply or else it did more damage than we thought." "No control, then?" Blake shook his head. "No control." MacIlheny frowned. If the remote controls wouldn't work, then it wouldn't be possible to realign the orbit of the satellite. "Keep trying," he said. Then he turned from the control board, went to the phone, and punched the number of the Orbits Division. "Orbits Division, Masterson here," said a gruff voice from the other end. "This is MacIlheny. How does that orbit on Number Four look now?" "We've got it, Mac. I'll send the corrective thrust data to the brain as soon as—" "Never mind the corrective thrust," MacIlheny interrupted impatiently. "We can't use it yet. We don't have any positive contact with her; she's dead—no response to the radio controls." "You mean you can't get her out of that orbit?" Masterson's voice was harsh. "That's exactly what I mean. She's stuck in her new orbit until we find some other way to change it. It can't be done from here." There was a pause at the other end, then Masterson said: "Mac, I hate to say this, but you've got a hot potato on your hands. That thing's in a cometary orbit!" "Cometary?" "That's right. Instead of a normal, near-circular path, she's going in an elongated ellipse. At perigee, she'll be less than a hundred and fifty miles above the surface." "Uh!" MacIlheny felt as though someone had slugged him. If the satellite went that low, the air resistance would slow her even more before she broke free again. Each successive passage through the atmosphere would slow her more and more until
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