“The Carefree collided with an Explorer satellite,” the butler replied. “It destroyed the flight deck while Mac was on duty. It looks as if he had managed to close the door before he was swept off into space. The collision knocked us off course, and we’re plunging into space—toward where, no one knows. We can’t so much as lift a finger to bring her under control, and our antenna disk has been damaged so that we can’t even send an SOS.”
“Oh, no!” was all Garry could say, sickened at the sudden fateful turn of events.
Actually, he was thinking more of poor Mac than he was of their own grim outlook. He remembered how much the likable Scotsman wanted to return to the heather of his own land after his stint in space. Now he would never see Scotland again. Garry absently watched Ben squirting a thick liquid around the cracks of the flight-deck door, probably as a safeguard against air escaping from the ship.
“Ben has been outside in a pressure suit to look over the damage,” Captain Eaton said.
Patch turned away from the others, hanging his head in grief and despair. Captain Eaton put an arm around Garry’s shoulder, but there was a helpless look on his face that seemed to show the uselessness of saying anything. Gino had lost his usual cheery smile and could only stare numbly at the closed door of the flight deck, where their friend had been the victim of such a cruel act of fate.
Garry looked around at the ship’s company. Everyone was accounted for except Isaac.
“Where’s Mr. Newton?” he asked.
“Poor Isaac is completely crushed,” Captain Eaton replied. “He had just changed shifts with Mac at the pilot’s chair only a few moments before the accident. He’s blaming himself for the whole thing. It seems he overlooked the position of the satellite that hit us. He missed it on his last check, and Mac did not see it in time. Isaac’s gone off somewhere.”
It was indeed a dark moment aboard the once-happy vessel. Things had happened so swiftly that everyone appeared to be still in shock. No one spoke again for several minutes. Everyone just stood around idly, as if not knowing what to do next and not really caring.
Ben was the first to try to rally everyone’s deadened spirits. He had just finished sealing the cracks in the door.