On the Trail of the Space Pirates_ A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure - Carey Rockwell [394]
"By the stars," Kit gasped, "it's the air lock! All in one piece!"
"If Tom managed to get in there, or if he was in there when the ship exploded, maybe he has a chance."
"You're right, Astro," said Kit hopefully.
"But we can't open it out here," said Astro. "If Tom is inside, we have to take it down to Deimos. If we open it here, and he doesn't have a space suit on, he'd suffocate."
"He'd freeze solid before that," said Kit, not mentioning the possibility that Tom might very well be frozen already, since the ship's heating units had been torn away from the air lock.
Quickly Astro hailed the members of the emergency crews that had rocketed up from Deimos and told them of the possibility that Tom was inside the chamber. They all agreed, since they had failed to find the cadet anywhere.
Kit and Astro immediately took charge of getting the bulky boxlike chamber back to Deimos where it could be opened safely. Two of the jet boats were jockeyed into position on either side of the chamber and several lengths of cable were stretched between them, forming a cradle for the chamber. Since the jet boats were equipped with foldaway wings, which, when extended, would enable them to fly at slower speed through atmosphere, they hoped to make a glider landing at the Deimos spaceport.
Astro would not let anyone handle the boats but Kit and himself, and only by threat of physical violence was he able to keep the regular pilots out of the control chairs on the speedy little ships. He might suffer for it later when the officers reported his actions, but the big Venusian was beyond caring. If Tom was not safe inside the vacuum chamber, he felt there wasn't much use in being a cadet any longer. Fleetingly he thought of Roger, who didn't stand a chance of reaching Ganymede on a single solo hop from Earth in a ship the size of the Space Knight. The Polaris unit seemed doomed.
With Kit Barnard in one jet boat, Astro strapped himself into the control chair of the other, and intercoms on, they gently fed power into their ships. Coordinating perfectly in their maneuvers, they headed back to the spaceport with their strange cargo.
Slowly and gently, Kit and Astro circled lower and lower until the two jet boats were directly over the Deimos spaceport. They circled wide and shut off power together, coming down in a long, easy glide. Keeping the cables taut between them, so the chamber wouldn't touch the concrete strip, the two spacemen made perfect landings, coming to a stop directly in front of the control tower. Astro was out of his ship in a flash and almost immediately Kit was beside him. They took no notice of the stereo reporter who was focusing his camera on their efforts to force open the portal on the chamber. Nor did they notice the immense crowd, standing behind police lines, watching and waiting in silence.
"A cutting torch!" bellowed Astro to the emergency crew below. "Get me a cutting torch."
In an instant the torch was handed to him, and ripping the space gloves off his hands, the big cadet began cutting into the tough metal side of the chamber.
The seconds ticked into minutes. The crowds did not move, and only the low comments of the stereo reporter talking over an interplanetary network could be heard above the hiss of the torch as Astro bent to his task. A half hour passed. Astro didn't move or turn away from the blinding light of the torch as he cut into the section of the chamber where the portal locks would be. He did not notice that the Good Company and the emergency fleet had returned to the spaceport, nor that Sid was now beside him with Kit.
An hour passed. It seemed to the big cadet that the metal he was cutting, alloyed to protect spacemen against the dangers of the void, was now threatening to cost Tom's life, if indeed he still survived. No one could live long under such conditions unless they had a fresh supply of oxygen.