All the joints of the right side were still good. But it was a gamble how long they would hold. More than seventy-five percent of the springs in the suits were gone now. He couldn't expect the rest to last much longer at that rate.
Irritation gave way to apprehension lest he fail to make it to the door of the chamber. Carefully, he put his foot down and gave an awkward hop. His instinctive dependence on both legs nearly undid him. He tottered in the heavy suit and fell against the row of carcasses.
That saved him long enough to regain balance. Sweating heavily now, he turned the heat lower and made another try. That one was more successful. He gained about a foot on that hop. The door was —
Suddenly, it seemed a vast, incredible distance away. The twenty feet that separated him from it loomed like a journey of pioneering proportions. He cut off that line of thought and concentrated on the next hop.
He soon had to leave the protecting lee of the line of carcasses that had twice served to balance him. They were like old friends whose sudden departure now was tragic.
He hopped away. One slow step, and another. At midpoint he half stumbled, then recovered. He paused. His breathing was coming hard and fast. The muscles of his leg ached to the point of collapse.
Calm down. Take it easy, he told himself savagely. There was nothing to get excited about. He wasn't stranded on some barren desert of the Moon. This was his own factory where he spent ten or twelve hours of nearly every day. This was home territory. He could hop another ten feet and jerk that handle that would open the door and let him into the lock.
He resumed the slow maneuvering. Nine more. Eight. Almost there wouldn't be good enough. If the remainder of the springs gave way with just two feet to go, it was still no better than when he started out. He had to make every single one of those hops. And each one lessened the chance of making the next. And all the while the ghost screamed in his ears.
When he finally reached the wall he almost cried. With outstretched arms, he leaned close against it, hugging the chill, imprisoning surface. The pain in his leg was sickening, but he forced it to hold him up while the aching muscle cells slowly recovered.
He was safe, now, he thought. Safe. What had he ever been afraid of? He knew the answer to that well enough. It had always terrified him. The emptiness, the cold. He'd never get to the Moon. He'd never be a spaceman.
He looked up at the door lever just above his head. One pull on that and he'd —
One pull —
The chill of space seemed to filter through the Cordolite. One pull on the lever was all it would take. And how was he going to reach the lever?
He moved sideways and glanced from the tip of his sleeve to the lever — about twenty-four inches. It might as well be twenty-four feet.
Instinctively, he looked around. There was nothing to stand on. He cursed the futility of his thought. As if it would do any good to find something to stand on.
He looked again at the two-foot vastness between his hand and the lever. Involuntarily, his body contorted in an attempt to twist upwards towards that key to freedom. The whispering, screaming sounds mocked the futility of it. Almost, he screamed back at it.
There had to be some way to reach that handle. He squirmed, tipped, tipped farther —
That was it!
Spread-eagled against the wall, he slowly tilted on one leg like some fantastic windmill. Inch by inch, his hand neared the handle. Half the distance was closed. Then he saw the arc of his arm would not intersect the position of the handle. He straightened and moved more directly under it.
He tipped again. This time he would make it. Glancing through the lens of the headpiece, he saw the gap narrowing. That image was all that was real in the world. He concentrated on it, willing the gap to close.
That concentration cost him his sense of balance for a bare instant. Only an instant, and disaster swept upon him. He tottered, felt the sickening sense of lost orientation.
Soundless in the vacuum of the test chamber, the heavy suit crashed to the floor.
Bryan Kimberly cried then. Cried of exhaustion, frustration, loneliness and terror. He lay on his back seeing only the ceiling, a gray mass of steel in which were set the thick lenses that barred even the faint infrared radiation of the chemical lights which illumined the chamber.
How long he lay there looking up at that gray, hypnotic field with its glowing white spot he didn't know. He knew that he could not get to his feet again, and knew equally well that sooner or later he would begin struggling. But not just yet — not just yet.
This would work out all right, he tried to reason with himself. Someone would find him and relieve the ridiculous situation he had placed himself in.
Who? When?
This was Friday night. He glanced at the little clock face in the headpiece. It was after ten p.m. In the morning someone would miss him. But who? He thought carefully. Bernice expected him to be on his way to the cabin now. She wouldn't expect any communication from him. No one would.
Roy was driving her to join him Sunday morning. That meant not before ten o'clock, anyway. Thirty-six hours away. And it would take them time to become alarmed over his absence. They would make calls. There would be investigations by the police, fumbling, bumbling, wild guesses. Someone would finally think of checking clear back to the plant. His secretary, Doris, would remember that he hadn't left when she had.
But who would finally think to look for him in the icebox?
It would be Monday at least before they got around to searching the plant in such detail.
By then it wouldn't matter. He had been watching the air gauge for a long time now. There was only enough air for thirty-two hours at the most.
He lay there for another hour without moving. His mind seemed stunned beyond functioning by the calamity of his fall.
But after a time he wondered idly what had happened to the ghost. Perhaps it had taken pity on him and wasn't going to haunt him in his present predicament, anyway. Whatever the reason, the absence of that high-pitched screaming was one small blessing to be thankful for.
Or was it? Even as he thought about it he shifted his one free leg and the sound piped faintly in his ears. The irritating, knifelike vibration channeled through every nerve path and shook his body. He kicked out violently in an effort to shift position and ease the aching spots of contact between his body and the suit.
The sound surged to a higher, more racking pitch, then passed beyond audibility.
Ghosts.
In a spacesuit. In an icebox. He laughed sharply without humor. Our suits may spread eagle, but they don't scream. Johnson would be pleased to have his confirmation that they did scream. As if Johnson would ever know what he found out -
He clenched his teeth. If he was going to die here, he could at least die sane. And if his brain were still functioning he should be able to figure out that scream.
What makes sound? Vibration. Of what? He thought of all the elements of the suit that might vibrate. There weren't any. Unless —
Air columns vibrate. But there weren't any air columns. No — but there was air going through an orifice. That made a whistle. Suddenly he laughed out loud. He kicked his leg sharply and listened to the resulting shrill scream.
"Hello, ghost," he said.
It was the pressure regulator valve in the back of the suit. Every time a joint of the suit moved the volume decreased or increased with a change of air pressure inside that might be as much as a hundred percent. The regulator valve took care of that. As the volume decreased the valve drew off some of the air to a low pressure tank. As the volume increased, it passed back some of the air from a high pressure tank, thus maintaining constant air pressure within the suit regardless of the contortions of the occupant. When the low pressure tank was filled, an automatic pump evacuated it to the high pressure tank.