"About a dozen."
"How many do you want? Don't be such a glory boy, get in right now!"
As he pulled himself along the line and up through the hatch he realized that not only had he been undisturbed while on the rock but he hadn't even considered the possibility of becoming frightened! Pleased with himself, he closed the hatch door, raising the current in each magnetic lock to sealing maximum. As soon as the last bolt was sucked into place, his suit started decompressing while chamber pressure mounted in precise compensation. For a second he thought he saw a white speck eddy out of the specimen box attached to his belt but another did not follow. Anyway, suit vizors had a way of clouding up on the inside during chamber compression and that could play funny tricks.
Five minutes later, though, when he pulled off his helmet a little swarm of white specks welled up toward the ceiling. Then they were gone. Funny, he laughed to himself. "Funny, funny," he suddenly laughed aloud, "Talcum powder from the void!"
There was Hartley's face at the window, peering anxiously at him, and, for some inexplicable reason, that sight was even funnier. Shaking helplessly, Cramer slapped his knee and kept pointing at the face. Life is so wonderfully wonderful! he said to himself, unable to utter anything aloud now. Wonderful wonderfully!
After a while Hartley opened the door to the front cabin and helped him to his cockpit seat. "Sorry, old man," Cramer gasped happily. "Don't know why I did that."