"Why pick the one thing she can't burn? I'd settle for alcohol and oxygen."
"As long as you haven't got it, why not wish for the best?"
"Because we agreed to play this game for keeps. Now we've got to go through the motions of trying to make some fuel, from now till they find us. That's why I say alcohol and oxygen. I'll whomp up some sort of a still and start cooking alky while you and Matt figure out how to produce liquid oxygen with just your bare hands and a ship's equipment."
"How long do you figure it will take you to distil several tons of alcohol with what you can rig up?"
"That's the beauty of it. I'll still be working away at it, like a good little boy, busy as a moonshiner, when they come to rescue us. Say, did I ever tell you about Uncle Bodie and the moonshiners? It seems-"
"Look here," interrupted Matt, "how would you go about cooking up some maple syrup-here?"
"Huh? Why fret about it? We're sick of hotcakes."
"So am I, but I want to know how you can make maple syrup right here. Or, rather, how the natives can do it?"
"Are you nuts, or is this a riddle?"
"Neither one. I just remembered something I had overlooked. You said there wasn't any more maple syrup, and I was about to say that there was still plenty in Thurlow's room." Two days before, it had been Mart's turn to go into the city. As usual he had visited Thurlow's sickroom, j His friend Th'wing had been on watch and had left him alone with the lieutenant for twenty minutes or so.