By leaving it, Morrow and Anderson had bought perhaps 30 more minutes of life before the space station became a huge meteor riding its fiery path to death in the the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
Both suffered the guilt of enormous betrayal. The fact that they could have done no more did not erase it.
Frantically, Kevin flipped over in his mind the possible tools that still could be brought to bear to lift the space station above its flaming destruction. But his tools were the stone axe of a primitive man trying to hack his way out of a forest fire.
Eager hands pulled them back into the station. For a moment there were the reassuring sounds as their helmets were unscrewed. Then the familiar smells and shape of the structure that had been home for so long. Now that haven was about to destroy itself.
Then Morrow remembered the Earth rocket that had brought Senator McKelvie to the great white sausage in space.
That rocket still contained a small quantity of fuel.
If fired at the precise moment, that fuel, anchored with the rocket in the hub socket, might be enough to lift the entire station.
He shouted instructions and men raced to obey. Kevin, himself, raced into the nearest tube. There was no sound, but ahead of him the hatch was open to the discharge chamber. He leaped into the zero gravity room.
McKelvie was crawling through the connecting port into the feeder rocket. Kevin sprawled headlong into Gordon. The recoil threw them apart, but Gordon recovered balance first.