He picked up the quartzite "fishbowl" and slipped it over Jon's head. They settled it firmly in place on the suit-ring, and screwed tight the lugs that held it in place. As Jon turned on his oxygen he motioned to the plastic, and Jak smeared it carefully all around the seam.
When he had finished, Jon increased the oxygen flow until the suit bulged, while Jak minutely inspected every point for any possible leakage. Finding none, he made the OK sign with thumb and bent forefinger, and Jon reduced his air-flow and opened the escape valve until the suit deflated enough so he could move about easily.
From a chest of repair supplies the younger boy took a can of metal-seal and a self-contained acetylene torch. These he fastened to his belt while Jak was getting, from a wall hook, a coil of thin but terrifically strong, light, plastic rope that would neither freeze nor lose its pliability in the utter cold of space. While spacesuits had magnetic shoe soles to keep their wearers in contact with the hull, a lifeline was a safety factor in case they happened to break that contact and drift away from the ship.
Jon checked his suit and equipment again, making sure he had all the tools he might need, and that they were firmly in place. He snapped one end of his lifeline into a ring at his belt, tugging strongly on it several times.
Then he turned and grinned through the helmet at his elder brother. He waved him away from the inner lockdoor, then pressed a button. The inner door swung open and air rushed in to fill the vacuum between the inner and outer lockdoors.
Jon stepped into the narrow space, skirted the handling mechanism there, then pressed another button to actuate the motor that closed and locked the inner door. When the red signal light told him it was airtight, he switched on the pump that returned the air to the body of the ship. The lock empty, he twisted the knob that opened the outer lockdoor, then snapped the other end of his lifeline to a ring just beside the opening doorway. He switched on his suit-heater as he felt the chill of space.
Slowly, ponderously, the mechanism swung the great eighteen-inch-thick outer door partially open, and Jon was facing deep space. Although he had spent nearly a third of his life out here, it was a sight that never tired the boy's active, imaginative mind, and even now he stood for a long minute, eagerly looking outward.
The awesome blackness of the void seemed alive with millions upon countless millions of tiny, distant, pinpointed lights he knew were giant suns. On and on they stretched, as far as the eye could see—and beyond. In the far, far distance were blotches of light Jon knew were the incredibly distant nebulae—other uncounted billions of suns that made up the far-off galaxies and universes.
He looked overhead, picking out against the backdrop of the nearer suns of our own galaxy—the Milky Way—some of the larger giant suns ... Canopus, Rigel, Deneb, Betelgeuse, Antares and others he knew by sight. The patterns familiar on Terra were somewhat distorted here because of the difference in distance and his line of sight, but those suns could not be mistaken.
He only stood there for a moment, then he reached out carefully and grasped the rung of the metal ladder welded onto the hull, and which ran completely around the ship. He pulled himself onto this, and held there while he estimated where that hole should be.