About that time the second one penetrated. The jolt was sickening. Somerset reported both members of his crew unconscious when their boots let them slide against bulkheads at the impact. Worse, he said the patch equipment had spun loose and shorted, bent, and fused. He made clear any patch repair as being hopeless.
While Hiller listened to the report, he was sick inside his suit from the centrifugal effect. He recalled how he'd also been sick on the Whirlwind ride at the amusement park when he was a kid. A hell of a space commander. They could use a good collision against the direction of gyration any time, provided the sudden deceleration of the twirl didn't hemorrhage them internally.
Why was he worried about gyrations when the patch kit was a casualty? That latest development cinched it: the odds on getting through were falling every minute. He wasn't facing it, either.
One favorable element, however, was appearing: the particles size remained uniformly small. No structural damage of any consequence had occurred from the collisions already experienced. The hull, at least, could sustain the heat and explosion effects.
Subawarely the commander realized his thinking was punchy. The impacts of missiles against the heating ship's hull constituted a slowly fading pattern of noise and pressure and pain which he was observing objectively, almost amusedly. When he attempted to read the damage indicator or communicate with the crew, the effort became immense and the discomfort great. So much easier to remain contemplative about it.
No doubt this was the condition of the crew. After so much beating, the organic function can tolerate no more. Oversight Number Three.
The commander was aware sufficiently to hope Art Eastburn kept the air cooler circulating. He had already assumed, since the crew was suited in, that the engineer had cut off the fresh air supply. They didn't have to lose it all, just most of it, enough to suffocate somewhere in space.
That hunch? Seemed a hunch fitted in there somewhere. Was it really important? Nothing seemed important except escaping the punishment the particles of the Inner Asteroid Belt were inflicting on the near-senseless bodies in the spinning ship.
His thought processes alternately raced and then froze in a semi-conscious sleep. Between impacts rationality awoke in brief segments of contemplative continuity and slowed when another concussion shuddered the ship. And soon there was no rationality but fantasies rooted in present trauma....