"All right, Jake?" called Adam through the chest phone. There was a series of clicks. "All right, Mr. Adam."
Adam swung the lock control and felt the grip of the pale ocean, colder than anything on , sliding up around his legs, to his waist. Another spin of the handle, and side by side the two were settling gently through the opalescent depths toward the surface of Pluto.
Inside the ship, the lock attendants had gone off duty and the corridor was for the moment empty. Paulette glanced at the pressure gauge, saw that it registered a blank, which meant that the two had left the lock, and then turned swiftly to look along the corridor. No one in sight.
"At least," Walter had said to her, "wait till those two come back. You don't know what may be in that ocean out there—an ocean of liquid air and fluorine. Dr. Perkins says we don't know a thing about the climates of these extreme cold planets, and what forms of life may exist. Think of those horrible quick-acting fungi that destroyed the explorers of the first Uranus expedition."
"But you practically ordered Mate Longworth to go," she had retorted.
"That's different. Danger is his business."
There was no point in arguing. She left it at that, and promising Walter to rejoin him later, strolled down the corridor and up the ramp to the outer air-lock. But danger was her business, too, she told herself, as she swung back the door to the compartment in which the space suits were kept, and hastily took down the smallest on the rack. Yes, the eye-pieces were mica-covered.
Danger was her business, she told herself again, as she turned on the pressure jets to clear the lock; she was Paulette de Vries, the radio gal, chosen for her part in this expedition out of all the radio recorders of three planets for her utter fearlessness. And besides, that snip of a First Mate, Adam Longworth, had intimated that she needed protection. The lock snapped to behind her, and as it did so, she thought exultantly that Captain Walter McCausland might as well learn now as any other time that he couldn't order his prospective wife around, even if he could make everyone else aboard the Goddard jump.