Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had five or ten minutes before the estimated arrival of the second Soviet spacecraft. Holding the wrenches in one hand. Kinsman went forward again and looked through the living compartment for some paperwork he could take back to General Hatch and his intelligence aides. Nothing. A blank computer screen and a keyboard marked with Cyrillic letters and Arabic numerals.
Made in CCCP. He let the wrenches hang in midair and reached for the tiny camera in his leg pouch. Snapping away like a manic vacationer, he took pictures of the entire interior of the spacecraft.
As he tucked the camera back and reached for the wrenches once more, something flickered in the corner of his eye. He turned to the observation port and stared out. Nothing but stars: beautiful, cold.
Then another flash. This time his eye caught and held the slim crescent of another spacecraft gliding toward him. Most of the ship was in deep shadow. He would never have found it without the telltale burst from its thrusters.
She's damned close!
Kinsman gripped his tiny horde of stolen wrenches and headed for the hatch. In his haste he got his foot wrapped in the trailing umbilical cord and nearly went tumbling. He wasted a few seconds righting himself, then reached the satellite's hatch and pushed through it.
He saw the approaching Russian spacecraft make its final 115 rendezvous maneuver. A flare of its thrusters and it seemed to come to a stop alongside the satellite.
Kinsman ducked across the satellite's hull, swinging hand over hand along the grips until he was crouched in the shadow of its dark side. Waiting there, trying to figure out what to do next, he coiled his umbilical so that it would be less obvious to whoever was inside the new arrival.
The new spacecraft was considerably smaller than the satellite, built along the lines of Kinsman's own delta-winged Manta. Abruptly a hatch popped open. A space-suited figure emerged and hovered dreamlike for a long moment. Kinsman saw the cosmonaut had no umbilical. Instead, he wore bulging packs on his back: life support and maneuvering units.
How many of them are there? he wondered.
A wispy plume of gas jetted from the cosmonaut's backpack as he sailed purposefully over to the satellite's hatch.
Unconsciously Kinsman hunched deeper in the shadows as the Russian approached. Only one of them; no one else had appeared from the spacecraft. The newcomer reached the still-open hatch of the satellite. For several moments he did not move. Kinsman tried every frequency on his suit radio, to no avail. The Russians used different frequencies; they could not talk to one another, could not listen in on each other's chatter.
The cosmonaut edged away from the satellite and, hovering, turned toward Kinsman's Manta, still hanging a scant fifty meters away.
Kinsman felt himself start to sweat, even in the cold darkness. The cosmonaut jetted away from the satellite, toward the Manta.
Dammitall! Kinsman raged at himself. First rule of warfare, you stupid ass: keep your line of retreat open!
He pushed off the satellite and started floating back toward the Manta. It was nightmarish, drifting through space with agonizing slowness while the cosmonaut sped on ahead. The cosmonaut spotted Kinsman as he cleared the shadow of the satellite and emerged into the sunlight.
For a moment they simply stared at each other, separated 116 by some forty meters of nothingness.
"Get away from that spacecraft!" Kinsman shouted, knowing that their radios were not on the same frequency.
As if to disprove the point, the cosmonaut put a hand on the lip of the Mania's hatch and peered inside. Kinsman nailed his arms and legs trying to raise some speed. Still he moved with hellish slowness. Then he remembered the wrenches he was carrying.
Almost without thinking he tossed the entire handful of them at the cosmonaut. The effort swung him wildly off balance. The Earth slid across his field of vision, then the stars swam by dizzyingly and the Russian satellite. He caught a glimpse of the cosmonaut as the wrenches rained around him. Most of them missed and bounced noiselessly off the Manta's hull. But one banged into the intruder's helmet hard enough to jar him, then rebounded crazily out of sight.
