“Thank goodness somebody’s alive in there!” Mr. Shannon said thankfully. “I guess the ship just coasted into the rock wall without too much force.”
The freighter crew began helping people out of the passenger rocket. If things weren’t so serious, it would have been funny for Sue and Steve to see them in their balloon-like space suits, bouncing one careful step at a time and holding on for dear life to the rope.
As the party neared the freighter, the twins suddenly saw their father dash toward the ship. In his haste, Mr. Shannon seemed to have forgotten where he was and went scooting upward like a high-jumper.
“Dad!” Sue and Steve cried out together.
Mr. Shannon had to put out his hands and feet at the last minute to keep from crashing into the wall of the freighter. Then he pulled himself down to the ground with his safety line. When they saw that their father was unhurt, Sue and Steve began walking toward the ship with careful steps.
They heard their dad exclaim, “Mr. Ballinger!” as he walked over to one of the men from the Pole Star.
“John Shannon!” the man said.
It turned out that Mr. Ballinger was the president of the American Space Supply Company and was Mr. Shannon’s boss. Mr. Ballinger explained that the Pole Star was heading for Mars when there was an explosion in the rocket tubes. By landing on Sierra the captain thought there was a better chance of their being found than if they had just kept drifting in space, because all ships knew the path of “The Flying Mountain.” No one had been hurt in the landing and the Pole Star had enough fuel to get the freighter back to Earth.
“I don’t know whether I should fire you people or not for risking my good freighter just to save an old codger like me!” the friendly Mr. Ballinger joked.
“We almost didn’t,” Steve’s dad reminded him and explained how Sue’s outburst had decided the problem.