"I'm the guy who has to watch supplies on this boat. I checked the oxygen after the crash broke open those three compartments on the supply deck. There's 3800 pounds of oxygen left. It'll take about 22 months for the rescue ship to get here from Mars. At 2.8 pounds of oxygen a day, you and I can make it, but it would have lasted the three of us only 15 months."
Jonner cursed him for a full minute, not loudly but with such intensity that Kraag felt his face getting warm.
"You damn murderer!" finished Jonner. "You damn cold-blooded murderer!"
"Cut it out, Jonner," growled Kraag. "I can't understand you and Stein. What were you expecting to save us? A miracle?"
"I don't feel like talking about it now," said Jonner warily. "If you had only ... Hell, Kraag, we'd been together a long time. Even if all of us had thought we were going to die, I didn't think we'd kill each other off like animals."
"Self-preservation is the first law of nature," said Kraag cynically. "Better that two should die than three. Come on in, Jonner."
"That's self-preservation? No thanks, Kraag. You know I'll turn you in as a murderer when the rescue ship gets here. I have no hankering to walk up where you can burn me down."
"Okay, stay out there till your air gives out."
The airlock was not a comfortable place to spend one of the asteroid's seven-hour nights, but Kraag was afraid not to stand guard there with his heat-gun. He was afraid to sleep, too, for the airlock combination was virtually noiseless and Jonner could open it from the outside. Jonner was unarmed, but Kraag had no hankering for a hand-to-hand fight with the powerfully built captain inside the personnel sphere. Because the air would swish out of the lock instantly if Jonner opened it, Kraag had to wear a spacesuit.
He tried to talk to Jonner several times, but got no answer. Toward dawn, Kraag dozed off, only to be brought awake with a start by Jonner's voice in his earphones.