"I've told you what to do!" I shoved him to the catwalk. "Get out of
here. Get Waters forward. Get the men out of the hull."
His anguished eyes stared at me; then he turned and ran forward on the
catwalk. I saw him forcibly dragging the bald-headed Waters from the
helio cubby. It was the last time I ever saw either of them.
A buzzer was ringing in the turret, and I plunged back for it. The
exertion put a band of pain across my chest, a panting constriction
from the lowering pressure.
Fanning, assistant engineer, was still at the pressure pumps. His
voice came up: "Pumps and renewers working. Will you use the gravity
shifters?"
"Hell, no! Get out of there, Fanning. We're smashed. Air going. It's a
matter of minutes--abandoning ship. Get forward!"
Suddenly the stern bulkhead cracked with a great diagonal rift. I
waited a moment to give them all time to get forward; then I slid all
the cross 'midship bulkheads.
It was barely in time. The stern bulkhead went out with a gale of
wind, but the barrier amidships stemmed it. Half of the vessel
sternward was devoid of air, but here in the bow we could last a
little longer. Beneath me I could see Grantline's men--some of them,
not all--and a few of the stewards, crew and officers, crowding the
deck, donning space-suits. The two side chambers were ready; half a
dozen men crowded into each of them. The deck doors slid closed. The
outer ports opened; helmeted, goggled, bloated figures were blown by
the outgoing air from the chamber into space. Then the outer slides
went closed. The pumps filled up the chambers; the deck doors opened
again. Another batch of men....
I saw Grantline, suited but with his helmet off, dashing from one side
of the deck to the other, commanding the abandonment.
The central bulkheads seemed momentarily holding. Then little red
lights in the panel board before me showed where in the hull corridors
the doors were leaking, cracking, giving away, breaking under the
strain. The whole ribbed framework of the vessel was strained and
slued. The bulkhead sides no longer set true in the casements. Air was
whining everywhere and pulling sternward.
It was the last stand; I was aware that the alarm siren had ceased.
There was a sudden stillness, with only the shouts of the remaining
men at the exit-ports mingling with the whine of the wind and the
roaring in my head. I felt detached, far-away; my senses were reeling.
I staggered to the gauges of the Erentz system, the system whereby an
oscillating current, circling within the double-shelled walls of hull
and dome, absorbed into negative energy much of the interior pressure.
The main walls of the vessel were straining outward. The _Cometara_
could collapse at any moment. I started for the catwalk door. The
electro-telescope stood near it and I yielded to a vague desire to
gaze into the eyepiece. The instrument was still operative. I swept it
sternward.
The enemy ship had not vanished. By what strange means, I cannot say,
its velocity had been checked. A few thousand miles from us, it was
making a narrow, close-angle turn. Coming back? I thought so.
I suddenly realized my intention of having all the gravity-plates in
neutral before abandoning the ship. I seized the controls now. An
agony of fear was upon me that the shifting valves would fail. But
they did not. The plates slid haltingly, reluctantly.
I recall staggering to the catwalk. It seemed that the central
bulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneath
me. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself in
the stays of the ladder rail and was hanging there.
I think I fell the last ten feet to the deck. The roaring in my ears,
the bands tightening about my chest encompassed all the world.
Then I was on my feet again, and I stumbled over another body. It was
garbed in a space-suit, with the helmet beside it. I stripped it of
the suit. I was panting, with all the world whirling in a daze,
bursting spots of light before my eyes.
Ten feet away down the deck was the opened door of the pressure
chamber. A bloated figure came into my dreamlike vista, moving for the
pressure door. It turned, saw me, came leaping and bent over me. I saw
behind the vizor that it was Grantline. His bloated, gloved hands
helped me don my suit.
He helped me with my helmet. The metal tip on Grantline's gloved hand
touched the contact-plate on my shoulder. His voice sounded from the
tiny audiphone grid within my helmet. "Gregg! Thank God I found you!
All right?"
"Yes." My head was clearing.
"I've got the chamber ready. We're the last, Gregg."