"It'll go through!" Bert shouted. Kevin leaped to a chest of emergency patches.
The wheel ripped through the magnesium shell like a knife in soft cheese. A gaping rent opened to the raw emptiness of space, but Morrow was there with the patch. Before decompression could explode the four creatures of blood and bone, the patch slapped in place, sealed by the remaining air pressure.
Trembling violently, Kevin staggered to a chair and collapsed. Silence rang in his ears. Anderson gripped the edge of a table to keep from falling. Kevin turned slowly to McKelvie and Gordon.
"Come here," he said tonelessly.
"Now see here, young man—" the senator blustered.
"I said come here!"
The two men obeyed. The commander's voice held a new edge of steel.
"You were the last to leave the line control room," he said. "Did you touch that machinery?"
Gordon's face was the color of paste. His mouth worked like a suffocating fish. McKelvie recovered his bluster.
"I'm a United States senator," he stuttered, "I'll not be threatened...."