Rob imagined the vacuum out there to be fairly crackling with radioactivity and potential death rays. Clay had known they were there too. Yet he had gone out willingly, risking his life.
Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb.
Keeping his shield deftly in front of him, Clay lit his torch with his free hand, and the brilliant arc light burst like a nova on the eyes of the watchers. Clay next shoved the insulated rod, to which the torch was attached, toward the hatch. Slowly, cautiously, he moved the tool in closer. Only a short way below hung the gray cartridge that was the C-bomb, and the warped track that dipped out of the hatch and downward.
Without a tremor, Clay’s hand guided the burning instrument to within inches of the top of the bomb. Rob shuddered to think what fury could be unleashed should the torch drift too close to the bomb.
“That boy’s got what it takes,” Lieutenant Swenson murmured, his subdued voice sounding strangely loud in the deathly quiet. “He knows what’s at stake, but he’s not excited.”
Clay got the flame against the track which was the only thing holding the C-bomb to the ship. Then he began the slow, labored process of severing the tough titanium alloy. The intense heat of the oxygen-fed torch turned the metal red hot. Then another danger came into the picture.
“Can the heat from the track set off the bomb?” Harry put the danger into words.
“It could,” Rob replied grimly. “It probably won’t, but it could.”
During the suspenseful minutes that followed, Rob heard one sucking sound after another as those around him breathed irregularly. The hot touch of the men’s bodies against him betrayed their tension, their prayerful hopes.