Tom and Astro looked at him bewilderedly. "What do you mean 'how'?" asked Astro.
"I mean how are you going to get the tube out of the ship?"
"Why," started Tom, "there's nothing holding that tube assembly to the ship now. We cut all the cleats, remember? We can jettison the whole unit!"
"It seems to me," drawled Roger lazily, "that the two great heroes in their mad rush for the Solar Medal have forgotten an unwritten law of space. There's no gravity out here—no natural force to pull or push the tube. The only way it could be moved is by the power of thrust, either forward or backward!"
"O.K. Then let's push it out, just that way," said Astro.
"How?" asked Roger cynically.
"Simple, Roger," said Tom, "Newton's Laws of motion. Everything in motion tends to keep going at the same speed unless influenced by an outside force. So if we blasted our nose rockets and started going backward, everything on the ship would go backward too, then if we reversed—"
Astro cut in, "Yeah—if we blasted the stern rockets, the ship would go forward, but the tube, being loose, would keep going the other way!"
"There's only one thing wrong," said Roger. "That mass is so hot now, if any booster energy hit it, it would be like a trigger on a bomb. It'd blow us from here to the next galaxy!"
"I'm willing to try it," said Tom. "How about you, Astro?"