Standing still on the asteroid meant turning
with it, from darkness into sunlight and back again. He yelled at Santos
and legged it out of there, moving in long, gliding steps. He regained
the shadow and kept going.
The first order of business was to stop the rock from turning. Otherwise
they couldn't live on it.
Rip knew that they had only one means of stopping the spin. That was to
use the tubes of rocket fuel left over from correcting the course. They
had three tubes left, but he didn't know if that was enough to do the
job.
Moving rapidly, he and Santos caught up to Koa and the Planeteers.
The Connie prisoners were pretty well bunched up, gliding along like a
herd of fantastic sheep. Their shepherds were Pederson, Nunez, and Dowst.
The three Planeteers had a pistol in each hand. The spares were probably
those taken from prisoners.
The Planeteers were loaded down with equipment. A few Connie prisoners
carried equipment, too.
Trudeau had the rocket launcher and the remaining rockets. Kemp had his
torch and two tanks of oxygen. Bradshaw had tied his safety line to the
squat containers of chemical fuel for the torch and was towing them
behind like strange balloons. The only trouble with that system, Rip
thought, was that Bradshaw could stop, but the fuel would have a tendency
to keep going.
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