She was no longer Lois. Now she was an older woman, with a bit of added weight and thickness. She was still beautiful, but more matronly than she had been as Lois. About her was none of the warm-blooded ardor she had displayed the night before. And no remembrance of it in her eyes.
I poured a cup of coffee.
"Just how long do you figure we've got?" I asked Burgess.
"Mr. Lutscher—" he addressed me by my last name, as was his custom with junior officers—"I will not equivocate. We have fuel enough to furnish us with heat and electricity for well over a year. But our food will last less than two months, even with strict rationing."
So there it was. In two months we'd probably all be dead.
Someone back on Earth had erred badly. In their calculations every item had been gauged closely, as was necessary. But they should have allowed safety margin.
The take-off had been calculated nicely. Ships had already been sent to the moon and to Mars. But this was the first trip this far out. We had not intercepted Europa quite as plotted. We had to chase it halfway around Jupiter, and land with the satellite going away, rather than meeting us. After we landed and new calibrations been made, we made a discovery. Our fuel was too short for the return trip.
Kohnke was our lone hope. A metallurgist, he knew the properties of the ship's pile.
But Kohnke was insane.