It was unlikely, though. Of all the components comprising the Dark Star, surely the weakest was human flesh.
Better to concentrate on finding Talby. He turned and twisted within the suit, but he couldn’t spot the colorful form of the astronomer. He wasn’t in the section of sky where he’d been before.
Of course, Doolittle reminded himself, he was no longer in the section of sky he’d been in before. The destruction of the Dark Star had rearranged this little corner of the galaxy.
“I can’t see you anymore, Talby. Can you locate yourself? Can you see me?”
“No,” came a voice so near it startled him. “I’m moving away from the planet, I think. You?”
“I think I’m drifting toward it,” Doolittle told him after a quick study of his motion relative to the crimson globe below.
“What happened, Doolittle?” Now a faint crackle began to creep into Talby’s words. They must be moving apart very fast.
He was surprised at how calmly he replied, how easily the words came. “The bomb must have gone off inside the ship after all.”
“What? You say the ship blew up?”
But Doolittle didn’t repeat himself. He looked down and to his right. The ship should have been there. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anyplace, anymore.
“Funny,” he mused, talking out loud. “I thought I had the damned thing convinced, I wonder what went wrong.”
“Doolittle!”
He blinked. “Yes, Talby, the ship blew up. The last bomb detonated inside.”
“Boiler and Pinback?”
“They were aboard when it went, Talby. They’re dead. They’re dead and the ship is dead.”
There was a considerable pause before the astronomer replied quietly, “Then… we’re dead, too.”
“Yes.” He had a thought. “Maybe we can keep each other company. Keep talking, at least.” He tried the controls on his jetpack. Nothing happened.
“Hey, my jet pack’s busted. Oh, man… when your luck runs out…”
Another large piece of debris came tumbling slowly toward him, spinning only slightly. Assuming it was just another bit of torn hull, he barely spared it an idle glance. Then he stared as it came closer and he recognized it.
It was moving past him and slightly above, out toward deep space. An oblong shape with a naked man frozen in the center of it. Frozen in chemical ice which the cold of deep space would keep from thawing.
“Hey, it looks like the skipper,” he blurted.
“What’s that?” came Talby’s query.
“The skipper. He made it out of the ship in one piece. Commander Powell made it.”
The block went sailing by and Doolittle thought he heard—it was imagination, of course—an incredibly faint, puzzled whisper as it shrank into the engulfing blackness.
“Men… men… what happened, men?”
Imagination. Unless the near-dead commander had developed unsuspected abilities in his state of chill suspension. He followed the nearly transparent block until it vanished completely into the starfield.
What might some exploring alien intelligence make of the skipper? For he would stay frozen, whole, until plunging into a sun or coming within the gravity field of a planet.
“Yeah, the skipper always was lucky.”
Now that didn’t make too much sense… but then, he wasn’t feeling terribly rational right now. He pondered his options.
He could wait until his air supply went out. It would go quickly, in a puff, and he would choke, drowning in vacuum. Or if he adjusted it a little, measuring out the last drams precisely, he could slip into a gentle, painless sleep from which he’d never wake.
The first course was decidedly unappealing, but surprisingly, the easier way didn’t attract him much, either. There was something lacking—a certain nobility of passing which Doolittle suddenly felt he, as a member of the Dark Star complement, deserved.
Don’t rush into something, Doolittle, a little voice told him. After all, when the only thing left to do in life is decide how to die, it’s worth some serious consideration, it’s worth doing right.
But the only other choice he could think of was to crack the seal on his suit and let in the airless ultracold of space. That would be quicker than letting his air supply run out, but probably nearly as painful.
But if he could get his helmet off, he might have a few seconds of consciousness. A few seconds exposed to the elemental space no men experience. It would be a final accomplishment—and thrill.
He’d been a part of it for twenty years now, and it would be nice to go out as a part of it, too, with all the barriers finally gone between them once and for all.
But… there was the pain.
As a youngster Doolittle had nearly choked to death on a turkey bone. The memory of that excruciating experience had stayed with him all his life. The thought of choking again and not being able to do anything about it was an impossible emotion to overcome. No, removing his helmet was out. He would probably go out the quiet way, setting his airflow to the minimum and letting himself fall peacefully asleep.
But wait a minute. What about Talby? What was Talby going to do? They really ought to discuss it. They could at least die as a team.
He glanced behind him again. Yes, the explosion had definitely thrown him into a downward curve and he was coming up fast on the world below.
The reddish cast was more pronounced now, like a superintense Mars. He found himself wishing for a little brown and blue and was surprised at the tears forming in his eyes. He’d thought he had those emotions under control. Of all the times for an attack of homesickness…
This was ridiculous. When he let the air out, the cold would creep in and freeze the tears on his cheeks. That wasn’t the way to go out. There was a vital little device in the helmet that enabled a man to scratch his face. He used it to wipe away the tears.
“I’m going right toward the major continent,” he said, as though there’d been no break in their conversation. It took his mind off more maudlin thoughts—for a few minutes, at least. “If I remember the preliminary survey reports right, it’s got a pretty substantial atmosphere. Not breathable, but good and thick.”
“When you hit it,” Talby commented, “you should start to burn.” And he added, more reverently, “What a beautiful way to die… like a falling star.”
Now Doolittle hadn’t even thought of that! He perked up some—as much as it was possible for a man who was about to die.
“Yeah, that would be nice.” His body would be reduced to its basic components, neat and clean. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There’d be no skeleton circling sordidly through space for a sardonic cosmos to jibe at.
And then it came to him. He wasn’t even thinking about it, just letting his thoughts drift, and there it was, blazoned in bold letters across his brain.
“Hey, Talby! Talby!”
“What is it, Doolittle, what’s the matter?”
Doolittle’s face broke into a wide, Rabelaisian grin. “Guess what, Talby… I remember my name! I remember my first name!”
“Gee, that’s great, Doolittle. I sure wish I could remember mine. It seems I’ve always been just ‘Talby’. You’re… you’re lucky, Doolittle.”
And that was it—he was lucky. He was going to die lucky.
“Hey, Doolittle.”
“Yeah, Talby?”
“What is it? What’s your first name?”
“Edward. Edward Vincent. Edward Vincent Doolittle.” He sighed and felt completely happy. “Ain’t that grand?”
“It’s a beautiful name, Doolittle… Ed.”