Watching "Gravity" påminde mig om en novell som jag läste på 60-talet, men kan inte placera nu

Jag trodde det var av Heinlein eller Brown, men om det var kunde jag inte hitta den online.

Du kunde inte hitta det eftersom det inte är Heinlein eller Brown, det är Ray Bradbury s "Kaleidoscope , även svaret på den här frågan . En radioanpassning var episod 48 (september 15, 1951) av Dimension X som är tillgänglig på Internetarkiv .

Plottet var ombord på ett rymdskepp, eller kanske en rymdstation, när en olycka skickar astronauterna att spinna ut i kontroll mot viss dom.

The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.

En del av historien som jag minns tydligt var en av killarna som började skrika onödigt och bruset körde alla galen.

Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare, Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.

"Stop it!" The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.

En av astronauterna gick över till killen och krossade sin hjälm så att skrikningen slutade.

Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man's ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.

One way or the other, thought Hollis. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?

He smashed the man's glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.

Som jag minns slutar historien med berättaren att stänga av sin kommlänk så att han kan begrunda universets skönhet i tystnad.

Nej, de förlorar bara kontakt eftersom de flyger i olika riktningar:

Now all the voices were fading, each on his own trajectory, some to Mars, others into farthest space. And Hollis himself . . . He looked down. He, of all the others, was going back to Earth alone. [. . .] The voices faded and now all of space was silent. Hollis was alone, falling.

They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred deep. There went the captain to the Moon; there Stone with the meteor swarm; there Stimson; there Applegate toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking pattern for so long, hurled apart.

Slutet:

He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everyone was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.

When I hit the atmosphere, I'll burn like a meteor.

"I wonder," he said, "if anyone'll see me?"

The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed. "Look, Mom, look! A falling star!"

"Make a wish," said his mother. "Make a wish."

Jag hade samma tanke som upphovsmannen för detta inlägg och gjorde lite ytterligare webbsökning efter att ha läst den. Jag hittade svaret på Wikipedia-artikeln om "The Illustrated Man" av Ray Bradbury. Historien om de fria flytande astronauterna är en av de korta berättelserna i samlingen och kallas "Kaleidoscope".

Uppdatering: Jag skrev ovanstående innan jag läste de andra kommentarerna. Nu ser jag att mitt resultat helt enkelt bekräftar en redan publicerad.