The closer they moved toward the bow or stern, the greater was the force tending to fling them off the spinning ship.
Conway’s head was pointing toward the ship’s bow so that the centrifugal force was imposing a negative G on his body. It was not really uncomfortable as yet, however-he felt a little pop-eyed but there was no redding out of vision. His greatest discomfort came from the sight of the ambulance ship, Prilicla and the vast, tubular Christmas tree which was Sector General sweeping around the apparently steady ship’s bows. When he closed his eyes the feeling of vertigo diminished, but then he could not see what he was doing.
The farther forward he went the more power his suit magnets needed to hold him against the smooth metal of the ship’s hull, but he could not increase the power too much because the thin plating was beginning to ripple under the magnets and he was afraid of tearing open the hull. But a few feet ahead there was a stubby, projecting pipe which was possibly some kind of periscope and he began to slide himself carefully toward it. Suddenly he began to slip forward and grabbed instinctively for the pipe as he slithered past.
The projection bent alarmingly in his hand and he let go hurriedly, noticing the cloud of vapor which had formed around it, and he felt himself being flung away like a stone from a slingshot.
“Where the blazes are you, Doctor?” said Mannon. “Last time around you were there, now you aren’t .
“I don’t know, Doctor,” Conway replied angrily. He lit one of his suit’s distress flares and added, “Can you see me now?”
As he felt the tractor beams focus on him and begin to draw him back to the tender, Conway went on, “This is ridiculous! We’re taking far too long over what should be a simple rescue job. Lieutenant Harrison and Doctor Prilicla, go back to the tender, please. We’ll try another approach.”
While they were discussing it Conway had the spacecraft photographed from every angle and had the tender’s lab begin a detailed analysis of the samples Harrison and himself had gathered. They were still trying to find another approach when the prints and completed analyzes reached them several hours later.
It had been established that all the leaks in the alien spacecraft were of water rather than fuel, that the water was for breathing purposes only since it did not contain the usual animal and vegetable matter found in the Meatball ocean samples and that, compared with these local samples, its CO2 content was rather high-the water was, in brief, dangerously stale.
A close study of the photographs by Harrison, who was quite an authority on early space flight, suggested that the flared-out stern of the ship contained a heat shield to which was mounted a solid fuel retro pack. It was now plain that, rather than an unignited final stage, the long cylindrical vehicle contained little more than the life-support equipment which, judging by its size, must be pretty crude. Having made this statement the Lieutenant promptly had second, more charitable thoughts and added that while air-breathing astronauts could carry compressed air with them a water breather could not very well compress its water.
The point of the nose cone contained small panels which would probably open to release the landing parachutes. About five feet astern of this was another panel which was about fifteen inches wide and six feet deep. This was an odd shape for an entry and exit hatch for the pilot, but Harrison was convinced that it could be nothing else. He added that the lack of sophistication shown in the vehicle’s construction made it unlikely that the exit panel was the outer seal of an airlock, that it was almost certainly a simple hatch opening into the command module.
If Doctor Conway was to open this hatch, he warned, centrifugal force would empty the ship of its water-or to be quite accurate, of half its water-within a few seconds. The same force would see to it that the water in the stern section remained there, but it was almost certain that the astronaut was in the nose cone.