An icy chill sent a shiver through him. Great, gorgeous galaxies! He had forgotten ... had Koa and the others? He turned so fast that he lost his balance and floated above the surface like a captive balloon. Santos, who had been standing nearby to help if requested, hooked a toe on the ground spike, caught him, and set him upright on the ground again.
"Get me the radiation detection instruments," he ordered.
Koa sensed the urgency in his voice and got the instruments himself. Rip switched them on and read the illuminated dial on the alpha counter. Plenty high, as was natural. But no danger there—alpha particles couldn't penetrate the space suits. Then, his hand clammy inside the space glove, he switched on the other meter. The gamma count was far below the alpha, but there were too many of the rays around for comfort. Inside the helmet his face turned pale.
There was no immediate danger. It would take many days to build up a dose of gamma that could hurt them. But gamma was not the only radiation. They were in space, fully exposed to equally dangerous cosmic radiation.
The Planeteers had gathered while he read the instruments. Now they stood watching him.
They knew the significance of what he had found.
"I ought to be busted to recruit," he told them. "I knew this asteroid was thorium and that thorium is radioactive. If I had used my head, I would have added nuclite shielding to the list of supplies the Scorpius provided. We could have had enough of it to protect us while around our base, even if we couldn't be protected while working on the charges. That would at least have kept our dosage down enough for safety."
"No one else thought of it, either, sir," Koa reminded him.
"It was my job to think of it, and I didn't. So I've put us in a time squeeze. If the Scorpius gets back soon, we can get the shielding before our radiation dosage has built up very high. If the ship doesn't come back, the dosage will mount."
He looked at them grimly. "It won't kill us, and it won't even make us very sick. I'll have the ship take us off before we build up that much dosage."