"—six, seven, eight—"
He looked at his gauges. A lot of oxy-helium mixture was gone from the tanks, but they were big and there was still several atmospheres' pressure in each. A couple of hours' life. If he didn't exert himself too much. They screwed directly into valves in the back of his armor, and—
"—ten. All right, Bo." Lundgard started moving up the slope, light and graceful as a bird. It was wide and open, no place to hide and sneak up behind him.
Figures reeled through Bo's mind, senselessly. Mass of the asteroid, effective radius, escape velocity only a few feet per second, and he was already on one of the highest points. Brains! he thought with a shattering sorrow. A lot of good mine have done me!
He prepared to back down the other side of the hill, run as well as he could, as long as he could, until a bullet splashed his blood or suffocation thickened it. But I want to fight! he thought through a gulp of tears. I want to stand up and fight!
Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two.
For a moment he lay there, rigid, and his eyes stared at death walking up the slope but did not see it.
Then, in a crazy blur of motion, he brought his wrench around, closed it on a nut at one side, and turned.
The right hand air tank unscrewed easily. He held it in his hands, a three foot cylinder, blind while calculation raced through his head. What would the centrifugal and Coriolis forces be? It was the roughest sort of estimate. He had neither time nor data, but—