I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out, he thought. They can joke all they want about dying in bed after traveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killed you.
It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted as being a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, and discovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. It continued to do so for half an hour.
"It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout, "Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio.
He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outline was definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself drifting across its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance, but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards.
Drifting? he asked himself. It should be going past me like a shooting star! Unless they took exactly the same curve from Centauri VII—
Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC7-4-525. His own ship.
He had gone out of the air lock mainly on a puff of air, with some fumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out of sight of the ship—in space, not necessarily very far—and now he was back, after two hours.
A long, flat orbit in relation to the ship, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be at the ship's radio, but actually weaving back and forth across the rocket's course, just nipping it at this end.
He edged a hand inside the suit again and turned off his radio. If he found an answer, it would be fatal to be overheard mumbling about it.