Then I looked down. The thin copper wire which had secured me to the ship was no longer fastened to the ring just outside the locks. It was being pulled upward and Morrie and I were swinging around each other like twin stars around a common center of gravity. The centrifugal force of our motion was swinging the wire with it. I just couldn't explain it. There was a hasp at the end of the line which shouldn't have come unfastened. The line could hardly have broken. It was meant to stand a great deal of strain and there had been none. Not only were we weightless, but I hadn't to my knowledge, put any strain on the wire during the entire time. My push outward--or upward--had been translated into a motion away from the ship and I would continue in that direction forever unless some force were applied to stop me. The only force I was subject to was the gravitational pull of the sun, which meant I'd revolve around the sun forever, never to return to the Jehad. But there was another motion, too, and this was the velocity of the ship at the moment I had broken away from it. This carried me forward--which to me was in the general direction of the orbit of Mars. However, my relationship to the ship was not permanent. The ship was being constantly accelerated, second by second, by the thrust of the plasma motors. Even as I looked down, my heart freezing with horror at the thought of never being able to return to the Jehad, I could see the ship inching forward. The right triangle had become acute and presently I'd be behind the ship. Even in this tense moment my mind was demanding explanations, even fantastic ones. What had happened? If the hasp couldn't unfasten itself, if the line couldn't have broken, something must have broken it or unfastened the hasp. What? Morrie's ghost, vowing vengeance for whatever fancied wrong I'd done to him in the machinery cabin? Or Spartan? Or something else? These thoughts occupied only a second because I had to get busy and, as Morrie and I whirled around in our ghostly dance in space, I reached for the petcock of my oxygen flask. Just as I touched it, a warning shot through my mind: Spartan had given me a tank with only a small amount of oxygen in it, therefore he had to be the one who was trying to get rid of me. He had released my line, knowing I'd take the quickest way back to the locks, rather than to clamber over the sides. Small comfort, this sudden discovery. I realized that since I had a minimum supply of oxygen to breathe, it would be suicidal to use any part of it for jetting back to the ship, which was pulling farther and farther ahead. Across from me, sailing round and round like a devil's carousel, Morrie seemed to grin as the sunlight struck his helmet again. He was dead and had plenty of air, he seemed to say. I was alive and hadn't enough. And that grin was what did it. I realized he had enough to get us both back--if I acted quickly.