 How would you describe the pace of the characters, and why?
For Click and Irish were marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a damned sweet picture of everything that was happening. The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console, wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this meteor coming like blazing fury. Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's skin. It made a spiked fist and knocked the rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round. Hathaway only knew he was picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't long in following, swearing loud words. A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs. Stars, asteroids revolved. "Is this what ?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet. And when I'm ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!" They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The best scenes in life never reach film, or an audience. Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it. He stood there, thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film.
 Quickly. The characters were under a time constraint, depleting air, and were encountering additional threats that made them move with haste.
 Quickly. The characters were under a time constraint, depleting air, and were encountering additional threats that made them move with haste.  At a sprint. The characters were so scared that they were rushing decisions and they weren't thinking logically.  Average. Though the characters were concerned for their survival, they were taking things at a normal pace because they thought they could be rescued.  Slowly. The characters didn't want to endanger themselves further in the situation so they tried to think everything through fully.