"Okay, well do that." Oscar called to Tex, who was still snooping around. He arrived swearing.
"What now, Tex?" Oscar asked wearily.
"I thought maybe we could at least take some civilized food back with us, but those confounded worms bored into the cans. Every ration in the ship is spoiled."
"Is that all?"
" 'Is that all? Is that all the man says! What do you want? Flood, pestilence, and earthquakes?"
But it was not all-further inspection showed another thing which would have dismayed them had they not already been as low in spirit as they could get. The jeep's jet ran on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The fuel tanks, insulated and protected from direct radiation, could retain fuel for long periods, but the warm mud had reached them and heated them; the expanding gases had bled out through relief valves. The jeep was out of fuel.
Oscar looked this situation over stonily. "I wish the Gary had been chemically powered," he finally commented.
"What of it?" Matt answered. "We couldn't raise ship if we had all the juice this side of Jupiter."
The mother-of-many had to be shown before she was convinced that there was anything wrong with the ship. Even then, she seemed only half convinced and somehow vexed with the- cadets for being unsatisfied with the gift of their ship back. Oscar spent much of the return journey trying to repair his political fences with her.
Oscar ate no dinner that night. Even Tex only picked at his food and did not touch his harmonica afterwards. Matt spent the evening silently sitting out a watch in Thurlow's room.