Hampered by his original slow motion, Kevin could not move faster until he reached another solid surface.
The hatch slammed shut before his grasping fingers touched it.
A wrenching tug jostled the space station structure. The rocket was gone, and with it the power that might have saved all of them.
Morrow ran again. He had not stopped running since the beginning of this nightmare.
He tumbled over Bert and Jones in the tube. They scrambled after him back to the control room. The three men watched through the port.
"If he doesn't hit the atmosphere too quick, too hard ..." Kevin whispered. His fists were clenched. He felt no malice at this moment. He did not wish them death. There was no sound in the radio. The plummeting projectile was a tiny black dot, vanishing below and behind them.
When the end came, it was a mote of orange red, then a dazzling smear of white fire as the rocket ripped into the atmosphere at nearly 20,000 miles an hour.
"They're dead!" Jones voice choked with disbelief. Kevin nodded, but it was a flashing thing that lost meaning for him in the same instant. He knew that unless a miracle happened, ninety men in his command would meet the same fate.
Like a perpetual motion machine, his brain kept reaching for something that could save his space station, his own people, the iron-nerved spacemen who knew they were near death but kept their vital posts, waiting for him to find a way.