Explore "Blood on my Jets" by Algis Budrys on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Flight coveralls are designed to be airtight when fully zipped. Hoods with transparent face-plates and oxygen leads can be hermetically sealed to the collars, and every ship has emergency plug-ins for the oxygen tubes. In combat, all spacemen keep their hoods thrown back, like mackinaw hoods, so that if a hole is blown in the hull, they can slip the hoods on and plug into the emergency oxygen supply. Struggling into a full-dress spacesuit is too complicated a job to entrust to the few frantic minutes that spell the difference between life and death, and meanwhile, the coveralls are far more comfortable in flight.
Besides, anyone who'd seen what a spacesuit does to a figure like Pat's will agree that it's a dirty shame.