Straight to the deserted ship's laboratory the geologist went, and shut himself in. And there, some time afterward, Polaris, threading his way through the swaying corridors with Rose Emer clinging to his arm, found him.
So busy with his work was old Zenas that he did not see or hear the entrance of Janess and the girl. For a time they stood in silence and watched him. They saw him spill drops from a vial on the surface of the helmet. Then he went at it with a small drill which he had fetched from the machine shop. That was a bit of hard work, for he puffed and mopped his brow. He collected with care the particles which fell under the bite of the drill. Those he tested with drops from another bottle, and then again, opening and discarding a number of chemicals. At length he got a reaction which appeared to satisfy him, for he chirruped gleefully and nodded his white old head.
Next Wright donned the mask and fastened its straps. Polaris and Rose heard the whistling of his breath through it. He then drew a bucket of water from a tap, set it on one of the laboratory stands, ascended a stool, and suddenly plunged his head into the pail.
Zenas had not stopped to figure out the displacement of the container of a well-developed scientific brain. It was considerable. Much of the water splashed out on the floor, and not a little of it went down inside the scientist's collar. Nothing daunted by the cold trickle of the inundation, he bravely kept his head in the bucket, from which arose at once a prodigious gurgling and bubbling.
The old man's shoulders shook as though a fit of coughing had seized him. One minute, two, three, passed. Zenas stood so still that Polaris became alarmed. He stepped to the geologist's side and shook him by the arm. The only response he got was an impatient gesture of a hand, which seemed to say, "Go away and don't bother me."
Presently Wright raised his head from the depths of the bucket, and ludicrous enough he looked, with the odd snout of the mask projecting from his face, his white thatch of hair all plastered flat and the water running from his beard and making a mess of his cravat and shirt front. But above the mask his little dark eyes were triumphant. When he saw Polaris at his side, he could scarcely wait to unfasten the mask.
"There," he shouted, and he shook the thing above his head, "there is one of the greatest inventions of modern times. I don't know what is in the inside of it, or just what it does, but I'll find out. If that chap yonder is the inventor of it, he can take it to the United States, take out a patent on it and make a scandalous amount of dollars, and we can all become human submarines. How long was I down?"
"About five minutes, Daddy Wright," said the girl, who had taken a strong liking to the plucky old geologist and his bluff ways.
"Five minutes!" Wright's tones were awestruck. "And I took every breath regularly and naturally, except when I had to sneeze! And it was real oxygen I got, too. Not a drop of water came through this thing, and it was very good breathing. Well, I've made two discoveries."
"And those are?" Polaris questioned.