In the same instant, the cabin reverberated with a screaming roar, and a gale started all the loose papers fluttering like autumn leaves. A mist of condensation formed as the air, chilled by its sudden expansion, dumped its moisture in a thick fog. When Pat turned over on his back, conscious at last of what had happened, he was almost blinded by the mist around him.
That scream meant only one thing to a trained spaceman, and his automatic reactions had taken over now. He must find some flat object that could be slid over the hole; anything would do, if it was fairly strong.
He looked wildly around him in the crimson fog, which was already thinning as it was sucked into space. The noise was deafening; it seemed incredible that so small a pipe could make such a scream.
Staggering over his unconscious companions, clawing his way from seat to seat, he had almost abandoned hope when he saw the answer to his prayer. There lay a thick volume, open face downward on the floor where it had been dropped. Not the right way to treat books, he thought, but he was glad that someone had been careless. He might never have seen it otherwise.
When he reached the shrieking orifice that was sucking the life out of the cruiser, the book was literally torn from his hands and flattened against the end of the pipe. The sound died instantly, as did the gale. For a moment Pat stood swaying like a drunken man; then he quietly folded at the knees and pitched to the floor.
Chapter 22
The really unforgettable moments of TV are those which no one expects, and for which neither cameras nor commentators are prepared. For the last thirty minutes, the raft had been the site of feverish but controlled activity–then, without warning, it had erupted.
Impossible though that was, it seemed as if a geyser had spouted from the Sea of Thirst. Automatically, Jules tracked that ascending column of mist as it drove toward the stars (they were visible now; the director had asked for them). As it rose, it expanded like some strange, attenuated plant–or like a thinner, feebler version of the mushroom cloud that had terrorized two generations of mankind.
It lasted only for a few seconds, but in that time it held unknown millions frozen in front of their screens, wondering how a waterspout could possibly have reared itself from this arid sea. Then it collapsed and died, still in the same uncanny silence in which it had been born.
To the men on the raft that geyser of moisture-laden air was equally silent, but they felt its vibration as they struggled to get the last coupling into place. They would have managed, sooner or later, even if Pat had not cut off the flow, for the forces involved were quite trivial. But their “later” might have been too late. Perhaps, indeed, it already was. . . .
“Calling _Selene!_ Calling _Selene!_” shouted Lawrence. “Can you hear me?”
There was no reply. The cruiser’s transmitter was not operating; he could not even hear the sounds her mike should be picking up inside the cabin.
“Connections ready, sir,” said Coleman. “Shall I turn on the oxygen generator?”
It won’t do any good, thought Lawrence, if Harris has managed to screw that damned bit back into place. I can only hope he’s merely stuffed something into the end of the tube, and that we can blow it out.
“O.K.” he said. “Let her go–all the pressure you can get.”
With a sudden bang, the battered copy of _The Orange and the Apple_ was blasted away from the pipe to which it had been vacuum-clamped. Out of the open orifice gushed an inverted fountain of gas, so cold that its outline was visible in ghostly swirls of condensing water vapor.
For several minutes the oxygen geyser roared without producing any effect. Then Pat Harris slowly stirred, tried to get up, and was knocked back to the ground by the concentrated jet. It was not a particularly powerful jet, but it was stronger than he was in his present state.
He lay with the icy blast playing across his face, enjoying its refreshing coolness almost as much as its breathability. In a few seconds he was completely alert–though he had a splitting headache–and aware of all that had happened in the last half-hour.
He nearly fainted again when he remembered unscrewing the bit, and fighting that gusher of escaping air. But this was no time to worry about past mistakes; all that mattered now was that he was alive–and with any luck would stay so.
He picked up the still-unconscious McKenzie as though he were a limp doll, and laid him beneath the oxygen blast. Its force was much weaker now, as the pressure inside the cruiser rose back to normal; in a few more minutes it would be only a gentle zephyr.
The scientist revived almost at once, and looked vaguely round him.
“Where am I?” he said, not very originally. “Oh–they got through to us. Thank God I can breathe again. What’s happened to the lights?”
“Don’t worry about that–I’ll soon fix them. We must get everyone under this jet as quickly as we can, and flush some oxygen into their lungs. Can you give artificial respiration?”
“I’ve never tried.”
“It’s very simple. Wait until I find the medicine chest.”
When Pat had collected the resuscitator, he demonstrated on the nearest subject, who happened to be Irving Schuster.
“Push the tongue out of the way and slip the tube down the throat. Now squeeze this bulb–slowly. Keep up a natural breathing rhythm. Got the idea?”
“Yes, but how long shall I do it?”
“Five or six deep breaths should be enough, I’d guess. We’re not trying to revive them, after all–we just want to get the stale air out of their lungs. You take the front half of the cabin; I’ll do the rear.”
“But there’s only one resuscitator.”
Pat grinned, without much humor.
“It’s not necessary,” he answered, bending over his next patient.
“Oh,” said McKenzie. “I’d forgotten _that_.”
It was hardly chance that Pat had headed straight to Sue, and was now blowing into her lips in the ancient–and highly effective–mouth-to-mouth method. But to do him justice, he wasted no time on her when he found that she was breathing normally.
He was just starting on his third subject when the radio gave another despairing call.
“Hello, _Selene_, is there anyone there?”
Pat took a few seconds off to grab the mike.
“Harris calling. We’re O.K. We’re applying artificial respiration to the passengers. No time to say more–we’ll call you later. I’ll remain on receive. Tell us what’s happening.”
“Thank God you’re O.K.–we’d given you up. You gave us a hell of a fright when you unscrewed that drill.”
Listening to the Chief Engineer’s voice while he blew into the peacefully sleeping Mr. Radley, Pat had no wish to be reminded of that incident. He knew that, whatever happened, he would never live it down. Yet it had probably been for the best; most of the bad air had been siphoned out of _Selene_ in that hectic minute or so of decompression. It might even have lasted longer than that, for it would have taken two or three minutes for a cabin of this size to lose much of its air, through a tube only four centimeters in diameter.
“Now listen,” continued Lawrence, “because you’ve been overheating badly, we’re letting you have your oxygen just as cold as we think it’s safe. Call us back if it gets too chilly, or too dry. In five or ten minutes we’ll be sinking the second pipe to you, so that we’ll have a complete circuit and can take over your entire air-conditioning load. We’ll aim this pipe for the rear of the cabin, just as soon as we’ve towed the raft a few meters. We’re moving now. Call you back in a minute.”
Pat and the Doctor did not relax until they had pumped the foul air from the lungs of all their unconscious companions. Then, very tired, yet feeling the calm joy of men who see some great ordeal approach its triumphant end, they slumped to the floor and waited for the second drill to come through the roof.
Ten minutes later, they heard it bang against the outer hull, just forward of the air lock. When Lawrence called to check its position, Pat confirmed that this time it was clear of obstructions. “And don’t _worry_,” he added. “I won’t touch that drill until you tell me.”
It was now so cold that he and McKenzie had put on their outer clothing once more, and had draped blankets over the sleeping passengers. But Pat did not call a halt; as long as they were not in actual distress, the colder the better. They were driving back the deadly heat that had almost cooked them–and, even more important, their own air purifiers would probably start working again, now that the temperature had dropped so drastically.