His shoulders cracked from the tug and a fierce vibration pierced the body, he felt his chest being pressed into metal. On the upper panel of the pressure helmet the reboot lights of all systems of the space suit glimmered violently. The engineer’s voice burst through the roar of the jet:

– Ronny, this is a miracle! The fall has slowed down, and we began to level off, it seems that one of the shunting engines turned on!

– Yeah and Elvis Presley rose from the dead and helped it with a bright song…This is not a shunting engine, but my back pack has turned on – Whitehouse could not finish the sentence.

 He just clenched his teeth and let out a howl, trying to take a breath with his sandwiched diaphragm. A string of orange circles flashed before his eyes, his head felt heavy. The torso control panel cracked and sank in, the temperature rose sharply.

The hum of the back pack became a roar and suddenly stopped.

The red lamp flashed; the fuel consumption is 100%.

– Mack-cliff…– Whitehouse pushed away the firm bracket, which remained in the same position, and started to move away slowly from ‘Independence’.

It seemed to him that he was floating on his back, pulled by gentle surf, relaxing and exposing his face, damp from ocean spray to the sun. Fast seagulls…

– Ronny, we are descending again. Have you noticed which of the shunting engines has worked? Answer! – Rattled the voice of the flight engineer in his humming eardrums.

– Mack-cliff…– The tether uncoiled, stretched and sprang back with a sharp tug around the waist, causing Whitehouse to return from his comatose surf to the height of 291 miles.

– Mack-cliff …– Whitehouse was hanging in thirty yards from the gleaming white hull of the Shuttle. – Goodness, Mackliff!  My space suit and air conditioner broke down and the cadmium cloth layer has dispersed, and…

– What the hell, where are you, I do not see you…Ronny, Ronny! – Dybal’ interfered.

– Of course you don’t, I am hanging right at the opposite side – he gasped, starting to fall into oblivion, but suddenly shouted as if his nails were being pulled out.

– Idiots! Pull me, pull me faster!

The tether length was reducing with agonizing slowness; the electric motors could barely work with the discharged batteries.

When the astronaut fell into the oval of an airlock, the altimeter, which was the only undamaged device of his space suit, stated flatly: 285 miles at perigee.

***

The ‘Independence’ sank into silence.

Usually buzzing local computers were out of order.

The ozone-plasma synthesis reactor was a towering dead pile of panels.

Usually noisy TV and rustling air conditioning were also silent. Mackliff saved the emergency batteries. He was sitting fastened by the battery.

– Mackliff! I can see a probe on the right!

– Does the recognition system ‘beep’ something?

– The system has become junk long ago and it won’t ‘beep’ anything.

– Damn! Does it have any identification marks?

– Aha! Would you like its home address and phone number?

– Come on…

– I don’t know the Sun is in the way. I can’t see a thing…

– Try to approach it.

– What for? This must be the worried rescue service. We have lost contact with them about six hours ago. They are looking for us. Let’s hope that this thing sees us. Or maybe…There is a lot of junk in space nowadays. Eh, I wish we could shift the bracket and two hours later we would drink coffee on our way to Canaveral, – Whitehouse nodded in the direction of the Germans, seeking for support of his words, but saw that they had already climbed inside, and now he's all alone sitting on the telescope.