“Oh, no you won’t!” howled Ozaki. “Air with fish is better than no air at all.” But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring parts. He gave a slow quarter turn and the internal thumping disappeared.
“See,” he said triumphantly, “no more fish!”
Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin swept across his face.
“It’s going away! I do believe it’s going away!”
Kurt gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp spicy scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and relaxed in his chair. His face lost its pallor.
“How did you do it?” he said finally.
“No comment,” said Kurt pleasantly.
There was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brainstorm. He was more impressed by Kurt’s casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to admit.
“Tell me,” he said cautiously, “can you fix other things beside air conditioners?”
“I guess so,” said Kurt, “if it’s just simple stuff like this.” He gestured around the cabin. “Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They’ve got it together wrong.”