Patch fumbled loose his upper straps and struggled to a sitting position, but fell back down onto his contour seat. “Wow, I can’t make it!” he said thickly.
“There’s no use trying to get up,” Garry said. “We’re weightless and would never be able to get about. It’s funny how I wanted so terribly to go into space, but now that I’m out here I’m not enjoying it. I guess it’s because I’m afraid of what’s coming.”
Garry wondered what they should do. Should they turn themselves in and take their chances on being believed that their being aboard the Orion was due to an accident? But if they did this, then Mr. Mulroy might be held responsible for not seeing that the boys had left the ship. And yet, Garry realized, he and Patch could not stay in hiding indefinitely. Sooner or later they must be found out. If they did not turn themselves in, and they were discovered, they would surely be regarded as stowaways.
Then a new fear came to Garry. What if his and Patch’s combined weight was over the ship’s allowable limit? What if their being aboard would keep them from reaching the space station and, instead, cause the earth’s gravity to pull the Orion back down? In that case the two of them could possibly cost the space-ship line a new rocket worth millions, not to mention the lives of all the persons aboard in case a safe landing could not be made!
Garry was occupied with these grave thoughts until he heard the public-address system saying: “We are now in braking orbit.”
Garry knew this meant that the ship had reached the vicinity of the space station and was beginning to circle the station while the braking rockets were cut in. This procedure would slow down the Orion so that she would be moving at the same orbital speed as the space station. Then it would be easy for her to slip into dock.
Garry and Patch felt the tug of the ship’s gradually diminishing speed, but this was not nearly as rough as the blast-off had been. As the Orion moved into dock, the boys felt their weight returning. This was due to the station’s rotation and artificial gravity.
“Well, it looks like the ship has made it all right,” Patch said, relieved. “They must not have had a full load.”
The boys heard the technical language of the docking procedure. Garry listened closely, even though he could not understand much of it. But this was all part of the spaceman’s education, and he was eager to learn it, even at such a crucial moment as this.
Yet as he listened, he had another unpleasant thought. Now that he and Patch had the blot of “stowaway” against them, would this misconduct prevent them from realizing their dream of being future spacemen?