Mayhew, accustomed as he was to weightless maneuvering, never in his life traveled so rapidly as he did then. Floyd and several other crewmen, who saw him on the way, tried to follow; but he outstripped them all, and when they reached the sight of Hart's prison Mayhew was hanging poised outside, staring at the door.
There was no need of removing the welded bar. The thin metal of the door had been split and curled outward fantastically; an opening quite large enough for any man's body yawned in it, though there was nothing more certain than the fact that Hart had not made use of this avenue of escape. His body was still in the cell, against the far wall; and even now the relatively strong currents from the hall ventilators did not move it. Floyd had a pretty good idea of what held it there, and did not care to look closely. He might be right.
Mayhew's voice broke the prolonged silence.
“He never did figure it out.”
“Just what let go, anyway?” asked Floyd.
“Well, the only combustible we know of in the cell was the lighter fluid. To blast like that, though, it must have been almost completely vaporized, and mixed with just the right amount of air — possible, I suppose, in a room like this. I don't understand why he let it all out, though.”
“He seems to have been using pieces of the lighter,” Floyd pointed out. “The loose fuel was probably just a by-product of his activities. He was even duller than I, though. It took me long enough to realize that a fire needs air to burn — and can't set up convection currents to keep itself supplied with oxygen, when there is no gravity.”
“More accurately, when there is no
“In any case, he must have decided we were fooling him with noncombustible liquids.”
Mayhew replied slowly: “People are born and brought up in a steady gravity field, and come to take all its manifestations for granted. It's extremely hard to foresee
“They should have sent a spaceman to do this fellow's job, I should think.”
“How would he have entered the station? A man is either a spy or a spaceman — to be both would mean he was too old for action at all, I should say. Both professions demand years of rigorous training, since habits rather than knowledge are required — habits like the one of al ways stopping within reach of a wall or other massive object.” There was a suspicion of the old chuckle in his voice as Mayhew spoke the final sentence, and it was followed by a roar of laughter from the other men. Floyd looked around, and blushed furiously.
He was, as he had suspected from the older man's humor, suspended helplessly in midair out of reach of every source of traction. Had there been anything solid around, he would probably have used it for concealment instead, anyway. He managed at last to join that laughter; but at its end he glanced once more into Hart's cell, and remarked, “If this is the worst danger that inexperience lands on my head, I don't think I'll complain. Bruce, I want to go with you on your next leave to Earth; I simply must see you in a gravity field. I bet you won't wait for the ladder when we step off the rocket — though I guess it would be more fun to see you drop a dictionary on your toe. As you implied, habits are hard to break.”
Halo
“You disappoint me,” the class superintendent said with some feeling. “I have a personal as well as a professional dislike of wastefully run farms, and you seem to have furnished a prime example.” He paused briefly, watching in silence as the spheroidal forcing beds drifted smoothly about their central radiator. “Of course, I would be much more sympathetic with you if your own ill-advised actions were not so largely responsible for this situation.” He checked his young listener's half-uttered pro-test. “Oh, I realize that youngsters have to learn, and experiment is the only source of knowledge; but why not use the results of other people's experiments? This sort of thing has happened before, I think you'll find.”
“I didn't know.” The answer was sullen despite the grudging respect. “How was I supposed to?”
“Did you get an education or not?” There was some heat in the query. “I can't imagine what the primary teachers do these days. Even though you are so young, I understood that you had some qualifications and even a bit of promise in agriculture. That's why I thought you could be trusted without supervision for a few years. Am I to assume that you became dissatisfied with the yield of this farm?”
“Of course. Why else study agriculture?”
“Until you can answer that for yourself, I won't try to. Tell me in detail what you did. Did you try to step up the output of the central radiator?”
“What do you think I am?” The younger being's indignation flared abruptly.
The other remained calm and exhibited faint traces of amusement, permitting the feeling to show in his answer rather more plainly than was strictly tactful.
“Don't boil your crust off. You might not be able to spare it next time you go in to harvest. People still do try the stunt I mentioned, you know.
Every now and then it works for someone after a fashion, so the rest feel it's still worth trying. If it wasn't that, just what did you do? You're missing a culture unit, if I remember this solar system correctly.”
The student took a moment to find just the right words. “One of the lots seemed to be practically ideal. When it first solidified, it was just far enough from the radiator and just large enough to retain a thin surface film of light elements; and it responded beautifully to culturing with water-base growths. On the colder ones, by the way, I had good luck with ammonia cultures.”
“Quite possible, in that sort of bed. I noticed a couple of them were bare, though. Was that another result of this experiment of yours?”
“Indirectly, yes.” The young farmer looked a trifle apprehensive. “There was another plot, a good deal farther out and colder than my ideal one. But it was too hot for ammonia growths and too small to furnish the pressure they seem to need — at least the ones I'm familiar with.” The addition was made hastily.
“I judged that it should have a good supply of food elements, cooling where it did; and since it wasn't doing well where it was, I thought it would be a good idea to move it farther in.”
The listener's manner lost some of its amused aspect.
“Just how did you decide to go about that? The energy involved would have demanded several times the mass of your own body, even with total conversion — which I can't believe you've mastered.”
“I don't suppose I have. It seemed to me that the unit itself could furnish the mass without serious loss, though.”
“I see.” The comment was grim. “Go on.”
“Well, I went in and set up a conversion reaction. I touched it off as well as I could on the forward side of the unit, though that was a little hard to arrange — the thing was spinning like mad, as most of them do. Maybe that was the reason I let a little too much mass get involved, or maybe the globe wasn't as massive as I had thought.”
“You mean you were uncertain of its mass? Is something wrong with your perceptive faculties as well as your judgment? Just how old are you, anyway?”
“Fifteen.” The sullenness, which had began to depart from the youngster's tone as he warmed to his narrative, returned in full strength. The questioner noted it and realized that he was not being as tactful as he might be; but under the circumstances he felt entitled to a little emotion.
“Fifteen years on what scale?”
“Local — this furnace, around the mass-center of the system.”
“Hmph. Continue.”
“Most of the sphere was volatilized, and most of what wasn't was blown completely out of the system's gravitational influence. The rest — well, it's still circling the furnace in quite a wide variety of orbits but it's not much good to anyone.”
