He settled down to picking at the cord about his thumbs with the tips of the other fingers in his gauntlets. It seemed possible that he might in time chew it up to the point where it could be snapped.
The stars streamed slowly past his line of vision as he spun through the emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off and drifted away. Tremont realized that it was frozen and brittle. He redoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking of fingertips against thumbs, he strained to pull his hands apart.
The cord parted and his arms jerked out to their full spread with such suddenness that he felt his backbone creak. For a moment, he hung motionless inside his suit, wondering if he had hurt himself.
Recovering, he groped about, checking for his equipment. He discovered that nothing had been left. No knife, no rocket pistol, no line with magnet for securing oneself to a hull.
Well, at least I can reach the valves of the air tanks, he reassured himself.
He watched for the ship, so as to judge his direction. Several minutes passed before he allowed himself to recognize the truth of his situation: he could no longer see the gleam of Alpha Centauri on the hull!
He was already too far out to dare to waste air. He might give away his last four hours of life just to send himself in the wrong direction.
"How did I get myself into this?" he groaned.
He set himself to thinking back to his meetings with the others. Dorothy Stauber had landed from the same starship after passage from Sol, but he had not become acquainted with her during the trip except to pass the time of day. He seemed to remember that she had turned up in the Customs dome to ask his advice on travel....