Suddenly there was no air in his suit He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.”Ī meteor flashed by. “I want to tell you something,” said Applegate. Applegate continued, “Where were we, Hollis? Oh yes, I remember. “Go on, order me again.” Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you break when you hit the Moon.” As Stimson puts it, it’s a long way down.” Don’t pull your rank on me, you’re ten thousand miles away by now, and let’s s not kid ourselves. “Captain, why don’t you shut up?” said Applegate. Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.įalling, falling down space Hollis and the rest of them went in the long, endless dropping and whirling of silence. He smashed the man’s glass mask with his iron fist. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now? The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. He grasped the man’s ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another. “Stop it!” The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. In a nightmare Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming. Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. He laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. “I don’t believe this I don’t believe any of this is happening.” “Stimson, take it easy we’re all in the same fix.”
Stimson, you hear me?”Ī pause while they fell separate from one another. “It’s a long, long way and I don’t like it. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, if s a long way down.” Oh, if s a long way down, a long, long, long way down,” said a voice. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again. The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone. I’ll burn like a match.” Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour.
“What happened?” said Hollis a minute later.
“That should do it,” said Hollis, abstracted and quiet. “It depends on how fast you’re going your way and I’m going mine.” Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.Ī period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. With them they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn’t had time to lock on their force units. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back.
Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. And now instead of men there were only voices-all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw.
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