From one of the storehouse rooms just ahead of us a man suddenly emerged. I shrank against the dark corridor wall.
"Oh, you, Durk," the man said softly. "Lookit what I found in here—cask of alcoholite. Good drinkin', Durk."
Jim Blake is only a boy, but he didn't shrink from his job. I was tensed to leap past him upon the man in the doorway. The fellow abruptly saw me. He squealed, "Look, behind you—"
That's all he ever did say. Blake went at him like a little springing leopard. The knife flashed; the man went down with only a choked gurgle of blood in his throat.
"Got him," Blake murmured.
"Good enough. Come on."
The emergency pressure porte was to one side of the corridor, an oblong compartment, with one tiny segment of the tubelight up in its ceiling sending down a faint pallid sheen. The inner door here was open so that normal air pressure was in the porte.
"Luck better be with us now," I murmured. "Let's see what they've left in the emergency equipment room."
It was here on the other side the corridor. My heart pounded with triumph. There were plenty of Erentz suits and helmets here. Both young Blake and I had used the familiar Carpley suit and helmet for outer stratosphere flying. These were not so very different, save that the electronic current in the double shell of the fabric circulated faster, for the more speedy absorption of the interior pressure within the suit, when worn in the vacuum of Space.
We had them on in a moment, with the huge goggling helmets buckled at the throat. Through my glassite bull's-eye I could see young Blake's weirdly disguised face. He was trying to smile; but he was probably pretty fairly frightened. For which I don't blame him; I was myself. The baggy, still deflated suits hung on us in great grotesque folds. I touched my metal-tipped glove to the metal plate on his shoulder for audiphone contact.