He rolled away, then struggled to get to the valve again. But the push stopped. The tank was empty.
Groaning with the pain of his face, Jim went to his tracer. He forgot the burn as he saw the curve now paralleled zero. No ... it went up a little. Jim whooped for joy.
Now he scurried about the ship gathering together all the liquids he could find. Soup, fruit juice, medicines. He piled them beside the water tank and unscrewed the cap. Air whooshed in.
At the sound, Jim grinned. He left his pile of cans and bottles as they were, and unscrewed the cap to a spare oxygen tank. The compartment air pressure went up to about twenty five pounds. The excess of oxygen exhilarated him.
He looked over his pile of cans and bottles. He didn't like consomme, it went into the tank. Chicken broth followed. Everything he didn't like went into the tank, everything else stayed out. Then he patched the rip in the panel.
It was time. Jim crouched carefully beside the valve, opening it slowly. The mess inside the tank squirted out. Again the surge beat against the ship, but with the first groan of the hull, Jim throttled the valve down a little. His eyes were on the compartment pressure gauge. The consomme went and inside air began to hiss out. As it too expanded, the push on the hull continued.
When the sun's horizon was out of sight, the inside pressure registered only twelve pounds. Jim shut the valve off.
Now the tracer line was a nice curve upward.
Jim swung into the pilot's chair. He was a little oxygen drunk, but he made calculations grow on the page until he had his result. Then he leaned back and gave the universe a beatific smile.
His spiral now outward, would stop as soon as his orbit expanded and centrifugal force became less. As the forces came into balance, he would take up a permanent orbit around the sun. But that orbit lay well outside the region of heavy static, and he could radio for help. In his mind he already heard the sweet clang of magnetic grapples against the hull.