"If we have luck," I murmured it to myself.
He nodded comprehension.
Then, cautiously, I stepped from the threshold, out into Space. An empty abyss of forty thousand miles, down to the Earth's surface beneath me. Though I knew very well what would happen to me, of course, I must say that I had to steel myself grimly, to step off from the brink of that threshold. It made my senses momentarily reel. But the weird sensation was gone in a moment.
It was like a diver taking a step under water. I did not fall. I had let myself off the brink gingerly; and I felt my body sluggishly moving out a foot or two, with all the universe slowly, dizzily turning over. I am no skilled mathematician. Given the gross tonnage of the little X-87, doubtless astronomers could figure the relation of its gravity pull upon me, so close, compared to the giant bulk of the Earth, so far away. Perhaps even at forty thousand miles, and against the pull of the Moon, some two hundred thousand miles above me, and the X-87 only a foot or two—the Earth would slowly have drawn me down. But I knew that there was an aura of the vessel's artificial interior gravity out here. Len Smith had told me of many tests which had been made between the Earth and the Moon.
At all events, I drifted downward a few feet, like a waterlogged chunk of wood slowly turning over. Then slowly I came back; landed in a clumsy, struggling heap against the ship's glistening alumite side. To each of us, himself is the center of the Universe. Cautiously I stood up. At once the vessel seemed my little world, lying flat on its side under me, with the reddish giant Earth to my right, the round white Moon to the left; and over my head, the great glittering vault of the Heavens, star-strewn upon a background of black velvet.
I seemed to weigh perhaps a pound or two. Like a fly, gingerly I crawled along the vessel's bulging side. Then I came to the dome. The roof deck within was grotesquely tilted on end. The vision of it was blurred by the glassite pressure plates, but it seemed unoccupied, slowly righting itself as I crawled up the bulge, cautiously clinging to avoid having my own efforts cast me off.
Then at last I came to the top, with the little X-87 right side up under my feet and the Moon above me. I knew that from the roof deck I could be seen up here as a distorted, shadowy blob. My heart was pounding with the fear that an alarm would come, but none did. I reached, at last, the little pressure porte in the dome over the control turret and chart room. I had two deflated Erentz suits and helmets lashed to me. The emergency panel was here, like a trap door under me. Through its transparent bull's-eye I could see into the small, dim compartment under me. The lower panel was open, but there was a lever out here by which I could slide it closed. Would it make any sound and alarm Torio in the chart room under it? I held my breath as it slid. There was no commotion.
It took only a minute to let the air out of the little scaled pressure room. Then cautiously I dropped down into it, with the interior gravity gripping me so that suddenly I was my normal weight once more. Breathless, tense, I lay flat, with my suit deflating as I stared down into the chart room. Nina and Torio were there. I could see them, but not hear them. She was in a chair, with him standing before her. And then I caught my breath. What was this? An angle of the control turret also was within my line of vision. A crimsoned figure lay there; the body of Captain Mackensie. He had finished his work; charted the course—and this was his reward.
A little of the outside of the turret also was visible. It did not seem that the guard was out there now. Had he been sent away, so that Torio now might be alone with Nina? Fervently I hoped so.