"Captain?"
"Yes, Dodson?"
"What did you do about air-conditioning?"
"Well. Mister, what would you have done?"
Matt studied it. "Well, sir, I would have jury-rigged something to take the Cee-Oh-Two out of the air."
"Precisely. I exhausted the air from an empty compartment, suited up, and drilled a couple of holes to the outside. Then I did a piping job to carry foul air out of the dark side of the ship in a fractional still arrangement-freeze" out the water first, then freeze out the carbon dioxide. Pesky thing was always freezing up solid and forcing me to tinker with it. But it worked well enough to get us home." Yancey backed away from the table. "Hartley, if you're through making a pig of yourself, let's run over that meteor-layout. I've got an idea."
The ship was approaching the orbit of Mars and soon would be in the comparatively hazardous zone of the asteroids and their company of space drift. Matt was rotated, in turn, to assistant astrogator, but continued as ship's farmer. Tex looked him up one day in the hydroponics compartment. "Hey! Hayseed-"
"Hey yourself, Tex."
"Got the south forty plowed yet? Looks like rain." Tex pretended to study the blinking lights used to stimulate plant growth, then looked away.' never mind-I'm here on business. The Old Man wants to see you."
"Well, for heaven's sake, why didn't you say so, instead of banging your choppers?" Matt stopped what he was doing and hurriedly started climbing into his uniform. Because of the heat and the humidity in the "farm" Matt habitually worked there bare naked, both for comfort and to save his clothes.