"Your guess is as good as mine," I said. "I found him that way. And somebody tried to kill me, Axel. Didn't you see how my line was loose and how I was drifting in space?"
He shook his head, then reached down and examined my life line on the floor. The hasp was on the end. Someone had unfastened it. "I looked out the port and saw you pulling yourself in. I thought it was your life line," he said.
"It was Morrie's. I had to cut it to lash the tools topside."
Axel didn't seem to believe me. Now he examined the section of line I'd used to tie Morrie and me together. Apparently satisfied, he went to look at the air gauge. A breathable amount of air was in the locks—we took off our helmets. Then we worked Morrie's loose. He was dead, all right. Dead and cold.
Axel examined Morrie's helmet. His fingers probed inside where the valve from the air supply enters.
"Stuck valve," he said.
I looked relieved. "I thought somebody had killed him," I said.
"Somebody did," said Axel. He pulled his fingers from the valve. They held a tiny piece of paper.
"But it could have been an accident," I said.
"There could have been enough air in the suit to keep him alive for some minutes," Axel said. "What killed him was stale air—carbon dioxide he'd exhaled. Somebody put that paper there to keep him from getting air. Probably didn't know what was happening till too late."