LT. COL. GREAVES: Granted. But later developments bore us out.
SEN. LARCH: Let's get down to those later developments, shall we? Suppose we start from the moment you radioed the news of your discovery back to central control. What did you do then?
LT. COL. GREAVES: We estimated when juxtaposition would occur and how long it would endure, then radioed the information back to central control together with the information that this was the only time during our flight that it could occur. Finally we requested permission for one of us to board the other craft.
SEN. LARCH: I understand that you stated that in view of the fact that the ship was unmanned and that its attitude was relatively stable, the danger involved would be negligible. Was this entirely true, colonel?
LT. COL. GREAVES: Entirely. As you know, senator, orbital rendezvous have been achieved many times, both by this country and by the Soviet Union, and in several instances actual transference has taken place. The instance in question seems dangerous merely because the rendezvous was fortuitous rather than planned. Fortuitous or not, however, it posed no unusual problems, and there were two possible means of entry virtually staring us in the face.
SEN. LARCH: During your press interview, you referred to one of these entry points as a 'boat bay'. Will you elaborate further?
LT. COL. GREAVES: Yes. It was a large recessed area in the hull where the auxiliary craft used by the passengers and the crew when they disembarked had been moored. A lock gave onto this area, and I was reasonably certain that I could burn my way into the ship with the small acetylene torch that was part of the Camaraderie 17's hardware. This seems a rather naive assumption on my part in the light of the analysis of the fragment of metal I brought back, but I had no way of knowing at the time that the hull, however susceptible it might be to meteors, was utterly impervious in a number of other respects. In any event, as matters turned out I didn't have to use the torch, for the boat-bay lock had been improperly sealed by the last person to disembark.
SEN. NICHOLSON: Senator Larch, I would like to have the floor for a few moments.
SEN. LARCH: Very well, Senator Nicholson.