"Think you can work it all right?" I murmured.
"Yes. Yes, sure."
"Keep with me when we get outside," I cautioned.
"Yes. I'll—I'll try."
I was in an agony of apprehension that someone would come and catch us here before we could get the porte closed. But no one did. Our pressure suits caused no trouble. The Erentz mechanism controls, renewal of the interior air, and the pressure-absorbing current, are simple enough to work. Within a minute our suits were bloated, huge. And then as we stepped into the pressure room, I saw what clarified and altered all my vague plans. A complete get-away! It was possible now, for here on a rack of the pressure room floor lay a little volplane—emergency Space-sled, its canoe-like hull some twenty feet long, its wings for air gliding folded against its sides. It was provisioned with emergency food and water. I bent over it with hurried, triumphant examination. The stern had a tiny outboard rocket engine; and in the bow were small manually controlled gravity plates. It was ready; the descent to Earth in it could be made, with fair safety, and perhaps in a week.
We slid the inner pressure door closed. An exit out of a pressure room can be swiftly made. We opened the small vents of the outer panels. The air of the room started hissing out into the vacuum outside.
"Easy," I murmured. "Not too fast. We don't want to get blown out."
Within a minute we could open the outer door; the last escaping air went with a thin hissing rush. At the threshold before us yawned the vast abyss of Space. I stood for a second gazing down at the great mottled reddish ball of Earth. Forty thousand miles down to it. There was a little launching rack out here to hold the volplane. We slid it out; locked it into position. I had told Blake now what I was going to try and do. He demurred at waiting here in the volplane, but I forced him.
"You can see up from here," I murmured. "Somebody has to launch it. When I give you the signal, shove it off. You can pick us up."