of thin metal, some still attached at the bases of the walls and others tangled among the controls and other interior fittings. The driving machinery, which had been under the floor, was almost completely exposed, and a single glance was enough to tell the dismayed Earthman that it was hopelessly wrecked. Barlennan was intensely interested in the whole phenomenon.
“I take it you were, carrying some explosive in your tank,” he remarked. “Why did you not use it to get the material you wanted from this animal? And what made it act while it was still in the tank?”
“You have a genius for asking difficult questions,” Lackland replied. “The answer to your first one is that I was not carrying any; and to the second, your guess is as good as mine at this point.”
“But it must have been something you were carrying,” Barlennan pointed out. “Even I can see that whatever it was happened under the floor of your tank, and wanted to get out; and we don’t have things that act like that on Mesklin.”
“Admitting your logic, there was nothing under that floor that I can imagine blowing up,” replied the man. “Electric motors and their accumulators just aren’t explosive. A close examination will undoubtedly show traces of whatever it was if it was in any sort of container, since practically none of the fragments seem to have gone outside the tank — but I have a rather worse problem to solve first, Barl.”
“What is that?”
“I am eighteen miles from food supplies, other than what is carried in my armor. The tank is ruined; and if there was ever an Earthman born who could walk eighteen miles in eight-atmosphere heated armor under three gravities, I’m certainly not the one. My air will last indefinitely with these algae gills and enough sunlight, but I’d starve to death before I made the station.”
“Can’t you call your friends on the faster moon, and have them send a rocket to carry you back?”
“I could; probably they already know, if anyone is in the radio room to hear this conversation. The trouble is if I have to get that sort of help Doc Rosten will certainly make me go back to Toorey for the winter; I had trouble enough as it was persuading him to let me stay. He’ll have to hear about the tank, but I want to tell him from the station — after getting back there without his help. There just isn’t energy around here to get me back, though; and even if I could get more food into the containers in this armor without letting your air in, you couldn’t get into the station to get the food.” “Let’s call my crew, anyway,” Barlennan remarked. “They can use the food that’s here — or as much of it as they can carry. I have another idea too, I think.”
“We are coming, Captain.” Dondragmer’s voice came from the radio, startling Lackland, who had forgotten his arrangement to let each radio hear the others, and startling the commander himself, who had not realized that his mate had learned so much English. “We will be with you in a few days at most; we took the same general direction as the Flyer’s machine when we started.” He gave this information in his native language; Barlennan translated for Lackland’s benefit.