"All right—you've risked it. Now ... can you save her? That's all I want to know. Nothing else matters."
"Yes ... I think so. If the cylinder doesn't blow up for three or four more minutes. If she puts on a vacuum suit and goes out into space and we're able to pick her up tomorrow or the next day—"
"Then for God's sake tell her. You'll have to tell her about the cylinder, or she won't know how great the danger is. She may take her time about it."
"All right," he said. "I'll take care of it."
He was talking to her in the big screen when Joan and I walked out of the port clearance building.
We walked out because, if the explosion had come while he was talking, just watching it would have killed me. No worse death can come to a man than the one that can take place inwardly, for it can shrivel and blacken his soul and leave him a burnt-out shell of a man until he dies physically. And Joan could sense that, and wanted to get me out of there as quickly as possible.
The explosion came a full ten minutes later, which meant that even Hillard hadn't known how variable the critical mass buildup could be in at least a few of the Endicott cylinders.
We were standing in the open, two hundred feet from the nearest rocket launching pad, when we saw it—Littlefield's exploding star high up in the night sky. The brightness lasted less than ten seconds.