On the way down toward the shaft we looked in on the medic. He was dead from asphyxiation, his face blue and bloated with internal pressure. The psycho had jammed the airtight hatch of their compartment with a piece of luggage so that the safety device had failed when the air went.
We left him there and continued down the companionway. After a bit, we met three pressure suited figures, and I breathed easier. It was Holcomb and two of his crew from the shaft. Off watch, they'd been in the forecastle when the asteroid hit. Now they were trying to force their way into the shaft through a badly warped and fused hatch.
From the condition of the walls and deck-plates, I could see that we must be very near the spot where the missile cut into the ship. And even out where we were our wrist-geigs were clicking pettishly, showing that the thing had hit on or at least near the pile. Near enough to warp the insulating plates.
I sent Swanson and one of the tubemen down to the equipment locker for torches, and as soon as they returned, we began cutting into the shaft. Even with atomic torches it took us a long time, because those walls were foot-thick leaded steelumin.
Finally the glowing section of hatch fell away and a wave of vertigo swept over me. It seemed that I was about to step through the cutaway into eternity. Close to the hatch was a jagged hole that knifed through one half the ship's girth from the shaft to free space. It was as though a mighty hand had punched a steel forefinger halfway through a cylinder made of butter. The jagged edges of the hole were fused and melted into grotesque stalactites. And beyond gleamed the stars against a backdrop of diffuse nebulosity that was the Milky Way. As we watched, they moved lazily across the irregular patch of sky. Clem was turning slowly on her axis, one with the mindless drift of the cosmic dust cloud that was the Belt.
I stepped through into the shaft. The damage had to be ascertained, for the three lifeships would never take us all the way into Mars. They were not atomic and their range was sharply limited ... five hundred thousand miles at most.
The remains of the asteroid was a congealed mass filling the lower end of the shaft, and bits of machinery and shards of plating were scattered about the deck. The tubemen who had been in the shaft at the time of collision might have been the charred lumps stuck to the wallplates ... I didn't want to know.
The pile itself had been ripped open in one place, and a threatening glow emanated from the torn place setting our geigs whirring. I knew we could stand the radiation in small dosages, since our suits were insulated. But not for long. Repairs had to be made quickly ... if they could be made at all.
Using the pieces of plating that lay about, Holcomb, Swanson and I set about mending the break with the torch.