What saved Willis was a ladder he stood near, against which the swift river of air crushed him on its way into Space. For a moment he could not move or breathe. Then the suction was finished, all the air in the ship gone. There was only time to adjust the pressure in his suit and helmet, and glance wildly around at the veering ship which was being bombarded now as in a space war. Men ran, or rather floated, shouting wildly, everywhere.
Shaw, thought Willis unreasonably, and had to laugh. Shaw.
A final meteor in a tribe of meteors struck the motor section of the rocket and blew the entire ship apart. Shaw, Shaw, oh, Shaw, thought Willis.
He saw the rocket fly apart like a shredded balloon, all its gases only impelling it to more disintegration. With the bits and pieces went wild crowds of men, dismissed from school, from life, from all and everything, never to meet face to face again, not even to say farewell, the dismissal was so abrupt and their deaths and isolation such a swift surprise.
Good-bye, thought Willis.
But there was no true good-bye. He could hear no weeping and no laments over his radio. Of all the crew, he was the last and final and only one alive, because of his suit, his helmet, his oxygen, miraculously spared. For what? To be alone and fall?
To be alone. To fall.
Oh, Mr.Shaw, oh, sir, he thought.
«No sooner called then delivered,» whispered a voice.
It was impossible, but:
Drifting, spinning, the ancient doll with the wild red beard and blazing blue eyes fell across darkness as if impelled by God's breath, on a whim.
Instinctively, Willis opened his arms.
And the old party landed there, smiling, breathing heavily, or pretending to breathe heavily, as was his bent.
«Well, well, Willis! Quite a treat, eh?»
«Mr.Shaw! You were dead!»
«Poppycock! Someone bent some wires in me. The collision knocked things back together. The disconnection is here below my chin. A villain cut me there. So if I fall dead again, jiggle under my jaw and wire me up, eh?»
«Yes, sir!»
«How much food do you carry at this moment, Willis?»
«Enough to last two hundred days in Space.»
«Dear me, that's fine, fine! And self-recycling oxygen units, also, for two hundred days?»
«Yes, sir. Now, how long will your batteries last, Mr.Shaw?»
«Ten thousand years.» the old man sang out happily. «Yes, I vow, I swear! I am fitted with solar-cells which will collect God's universal light until I wear out my circuits.»
«Which means you will outtalk me, Mr.Shaw, long after I have stopped eating and breathing.»
«At which point you must dine on conversation, breathe past participles instead of air. But, we must hoi the thought of rescue uppermost. Are not the chance good?»
«Rockets do come by. And I am equipped with radio signals ―»
«Which even now cry out into the deep night: I'm here with ramshackle Shaw, eh?»
I'm here with ramshackle Shaw, thought Willis, and was suddenly warm in winter.
«Well, then, while we're waiting to be rescued, Charles Willis, what next?»
«Next? Why―»
They fell away down Space alone but not alone, fearful| but elated, and now grown suddenly quiet.
«Say it, Mr.Shaw.»
«Say what?»
«You know. Say it again.»
«Well, then.» They spun lazily, holding to each other. «Isn't life miraculous? Matter and force, yes, matter and force making itself over into intelligence and will.»
«Is that what we are, sir?»
«We are, bet ten thousand bright tin-whistles on it, we are. Shall I say more, young Willis?»
«Please, sir,» laughed Willis. «I want some more.»
And the old man spoke and the young man listened and the young man spoke and the old man hooted and they fell around a comer of Universe away out of sight, eating and talking, talking and eating, the young man bit-ing gumball foods, the old man devouring sunlight with his solar-cell eyes, and the last that was seen of them they were gesticulating and babbling and conversing and wav-ing their hands until their voices faded into Time and the solar system turned over in its sleep and covered them with a blanket of dark and light, and whether or not a res-cue ship named Rachel, seeking her lost children, ever came by and found them, who can tell, who would truly ever want to know?