"How close are we to the nearest of those parallel lines?"
"Three or four miles, Doc, at a loose guess."
"Remember that great mess of 'em fifty or sixty miles south of here? Shows on Ed's map. We must be—mm—seventy miles from the smallest of the two oceans—oh, let's call it the Atlantic, huh? And the other one the East Atlantic? Anyway the ocean's beyond that range of hills we saw on the way down."
"I saw campfires in the meadow," Dorothy said. "Things running."
"I thought so too.... Paul, I wonder if Sears can do any testing of the air from the lifeboat? Some of the equipment couldn't be transferred from Argo. And—how could they communicate with us? They'll have to breathe it soon in any case."
Paul checked a shuddering yawn. "I must have been thinking in terms of Argo, which is—history.... You know, I believe the artificial gravity was stronger than we thought? I feel light, not heavy."
"High oxygen?" Dorothy suggested. "Hot, too."
"Eighty-plus. Crash suits can't do us any more good." They struggled out of them in the cramped space, down to faded jackets and shorts.
Wright brooded on it, pinching his throat. "Only advantage in the others' staying sealed up a while is that if we get sick, they'll get sick a bit later. Could be some advantage. Paul—think we should try to reach them this evening?"
"Three quarters of a mile, dark coming on—no. But so far as I'm concerned, Doc, you're boss of this expedition. In the ship, Ed had to be—matter of engineering knowledge. No longer applies. I wanted to say that."