"He'd freeze solid before that," said Kit, not mentioning the
possibility that Tom might very well be frozen already, since the
ship's heating units had been torn away from the air lock.

Quickly Astro hailed the members of the emergency crews that had
rocketed up from Deimos and told them of the possibility that Tom was
inside the chamber. They all agreed, since they had failed to find the
cadet anywhere.

[Illustration]

Kit and Astro immediately took charge of getting the bulky boxlike
chamber back to Deimos where it could be opened safely. Two of the jet
boats were jockeyed into position on either side of the chamber and
several lengths of cable were stretched between them, forming a cradle
for the chamber. Since the jet boats were equipped with foldaway wings,
which, when extended, would enable them to fly at slower speed through
atmosphere, they hoped to make a glider landing at the Deimos spaceport.

Astro would not let anyone handle the boats but Kit and himself, and
only by threat of physical violence was he able to keep the regular
pilots out of the control chairs on the speedy little ships. He might
suffer for it later when the officers reported his actions, but the big
Venusian was beyond caring. If Tom was not safe inside the vacuum
chamber, he felt there wasn't much use in being a cadet any longer.
Fleetingly he thought of Roger, who didn't stand a chance of reaching
Ganymede on a single solo hop from Earth in a ship the size of the
_Space Knight_. The _Polaris_ unit seemed doomed.