"Clear the lock," Rip ordered. "Open outer valve when ready."
He took a quick, final look around. The pilots were in the boats. His Planeteers were standing by, safety lines already attached to the boats and their belts. He moved into position and snapped his own line to a ring on Dowst's boat. The spacemen vanished through the valve, and the massive door slid closed. The overhead lights flicked out. Rip now snapped on his belt light, and the others followed suit.
In front of the boxlike landing boats a great door slid open, and air from the lock rushed out. Rip knew it was only imagination, but he felt as though all the heat from his suit was radiating into space, chilling him to near absolute zero. Beyond the lights from their belts, he saw stars and recognized the constellation for which the space cruiser was named. A superstitious spaceman would have taken that as a good sign. Rip admitted that it was nice to see.
"Float 'em," he ordered.
The Planeteers gripped handholds at the entrance with one hand and launching rails on the boats with the other, then heaved. The boats slid into space. As the safety lines tightened, the Planeteers were pulled after the boat.
Rip left his feet with a little spring and shot through the door. Directly below him, the asteroid gleamed darkly in the light of the tiny sun. His first reaction was "Great Cosmos! What a little chunk of rock!" But that was because he was used to looking from the space platform at the great curve of Terra or at the big ball of the moon. Actually the asteroid was fair-sized, when compared with most of its kind.
The Planeteers hauled themselves into the boats by their safety lines. Rip waited until all were in, then pulled himself along his own line to the black square of the door. Koa was waiting to give him a hand into the craft.
The Planeteers were standing, except for Dowst. Rip had never seen an old-type railroad, or he might have likened the landing boat to a railroad boxcar. It was about the same size and shape, but had huge "windows" on both sides and in front of the pilot—windows that were not enclosed. The space-suited men needed no protection.
"Blast," Rip ordered.
A pulse of fire spurted from the top of each boat, driving them bottom first toward the asteroid.