He sat there an hour or more, and he thought the oxygen tank would have emptied before Markoe showed signs of life.
Both men were still dazed when they entered the pilot room. While Cargyle explained what had happened to them, and the manner of his own survival, his glance noted the signs of battle. Blackened pits, marks of blastor discharges, spattered the walls and furniture. Equipment had been shattered by chance shots. The inner lens of one of the ports had been drilled through the center, long cracks radiating from the spot. It had been hastily repaired, fused together with thurlite.
Most of the men wore bloody bandages, and one lay unconscious. Chapman, the chief pilot, was pacing nervously back and forth before the dead control board; the other men were now dropping back into attitudes of listless dejection.
"Why are we drifting?" Cargyle asked. The ship was silent, vibrationless. All rockets were inoperative—they were sweeping helplessly through space, undirected.
"Why?" growled Simms. "Because those crazy devils took as much fuel as they could and then drained the tanks. We're falling into an orbit—"
"Speed?"
"Roughly ten per second. We were trying to contact Tracolatown, but the mutineers smashed the hull plates. Parker and Swift are out on the hull now, working on the plates."
"Then we're—"
"We're sunk, unless we can fix those plates and get a patrol ship out to us."