Whiteford felt wet. He turned and grimly surveyed the demolished water tap. A few drops of water floated lazily, tantalizingly in the air. He had to have water! A kit near the food locker yielded some cooking utensils and an old-fashioned can-opener, one end of which might serve as a crude lever. He had to wedge himself between the tap and the bulkhead to get leverage to pry with; otherwise, a hearty twist only resulted in his body turning a slow circle in the air.
The tubes didn't straighten very easily. Finally, the can-opener broke; a loss that didn't become immediately apparent. He grabbed the pipes with his hands and heaved outward. They bent. He heaved again and they bent still more. On the third heave he felt a slight pain in his side. He was exerting quite a bit of effort—effort which on earth would have made him sweat and his heart pump faster. He was sweating now but his heart wasn't only pumping faster, it was racing.
He grasped the pipes harder for a final effort. With a brittle snap, one of the connections burst and a few drops of water sprayed out at him. He didn't notice. He was holding his sides in pain while his heart took off like a race horse. The veins in his wrist swelled to the size of lead pencils and he could feel the throbbing pulse of blood. He floated stiffly in the air, half paralyzed by sudden fear.
When the pumping had slowed down he turned his attention back to the battered pipes. He straightened one of them out—being careful not to over-exert himself—and used it to suck the water through. The water was clear and cold but tasted a little of metal. It refreshed him and he began to think of something to go with it. Whether he felt like eating or not, it was obviously going to be necessary.
It wasn't—too bad—so far. He could take the headaches and the nausea if he had to. There were—other things, though. Fear of what might happen. Meteorites, for one thing. Chances of his ship colliding with a speck of dust were ten million to one against it. But still....
He went to the food locker and broke out a small electric hot-plate, a skillet, and a dozen eggs. The skillet was a little flatter than an ordinary one with a hinged cover to keep the contents in.
It wasn't pleasant to think about.... The ship a drifting derelict, riddled and airless, with his body frozen as hard as stone floating on the inside. What rubbish! Let's see, a one kilogram meteorite with a velocity of ten miles a second hitting the hull ... probably fuse a section of it. Ten miles ... sixteen kilometers a second, approximately....
Five minutes later, he was trying to coax an egg, floating sedately in mid-air, into it. He'd have the affair around it, hurriedly close the lid, and watch the air forced out from between the skillet and the lid push the egg away.
A one kilogram meteorite at that speed could fuse about fifteen kilograms of hull ... about thirty-three pounds, enough to....