He stirred the paste in the bottom of the pan for a moment and then let out a cry of triumph.
"Aha! See there! What you think of that, by gum!"
A series of bubbles was rising from the paste, rising and breaking, bringing fragments of the tooth-powder with them, giving the water a cloudy and dusty quality as they grew and joined each other, faster and faster. Manool winked.
"Maybe Manool isn't as big fool as these hoodlums think," he said proudly. "I don't know much, maybe. But, by gum, I know my business. I know about tooth-powders and I know about providing oxygen for rocket ships.
"You know what, Captain. Most tooth-powders got sodium perborate in 'em. They put it in because that perborate give off pure oxygen when you put it in water, and pure oxygen is pretty good antiseptic. Only this time, we're going to use that oxygen to keep us alive instead of killing germs."
He leaned over and took a sniff of the life-giving gas.
"In a day or two," he said, happily, "the air out in the rest of the rocket is going to get pretty stale. Then they try to get in here. We hold 'em out all right, then afterwhile they come, offering to surrender, begging for a breath of fresh air. Ain't it nice to think that there's only enough for the three of us? If we get soft and let 'em breathe any of our air, nobody will reach port alive. So we have to be hard and let that mob of cut-throats smother to death."
He sat down and leaned back and smiled. Manool Sarouk felt pretty good. He felt satisfied with himself for the first time in a long while.