Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

So ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION The motion set him spinning weight- lessly. In the dark his hand brushed clothing that was not his. Someone else’s clothing. It was completely un- expected, for he had had no feeling of anyone being close to him. As he yanked his hand back reflexively his fingers brushed across something else that felt like soft lumpy leather. With instinctive revulsion, he pushed, and something heavy and limp gave inertly and drifted away. A dead man. His throat went stiff and his neck hair prickled, but he saw the practical aspects of what he had found, and he forced himself to think about what he should do. He and the body were drifting away from each other now. It had insignia on its shirt sleeve which would indicate a man who would not know enough to be worth questioning. He had to find it in the dark and change shirts. Calland waited until he drifted into contact with the opposite wall then pushed himself back in the direction he had pushed the corpse. After he had left contact with it he realized that the wall had been warm, almost hot, and flat instead of curved like the usual corridor walls. It was one of the air-preserving walls which _ had fallen between himself and the rest of the ship, and something was heating it on the other side. It was possible that the Furries were on that side, cutting through. He floated in darkness and silence as thick as black cotton. If they were cutting through the walls to get at him, why the eerie silence? Absolute darkness. Drifting, he stretched his hands out before him, steeling himself against the fear of that dry soft leather touch he had felt before. Then he wondered if he had turned without feeling the turn, and had a sudden conviction that he was stretch- ing his hands towards where he had been, drifting backward into the em- brace of a dead body. He began to swing his arms in sudden panic, just as his left shoulder touched something smooth and flat and searingly cold. Before he could check himself, an elbow jolted into the cold surface and shoved him away from contact. He drifted, spinning around and around in the dark, his shoulder tingling from the icy contact. , That had been a wall. But it had been too cold. Almost as cold as space. He realized then the reason for the silence. There was no sound from the remainder of the ship because the remainder of the ship was gone. The small boxed-off section of corridor where he was floating along, a fragment of ship in the frigid cold of space, heated on one side by the violence of unshielded sunlight. That meant he wouldn’t have to change his shirt with the corpse. He relaxed and floated numbly without thinking. In the dark, cold and silence he could have slept or been unconscious without noticing when he slept or woke. Sometimes he would feel a wave of heat or chill just before he drifted into a wall in the dark, and would shove off hastily from a surface that would cling to his fingers as he touched it, scorching with either heat or cold. He did not expect to be rescued. Eleven hours later he was picked up and treated for scorch and frost- bite and given hot drinks and soup, and allowed to take a long comfortable hot bath. After he was dressed, combed and comfortable he still felt odd, as if something permanent had happened to him. He looked soberly at him- self in the mirror for a while, trying to find a difference in his face, then gave conniicloooks.conn