The suit was several sizes too large but it covered her adequately. Too adequately, Kennon decided. She looked like a pile of wrinkles with legs. He chuckled.
She glared. “So I’m funny,” she said. “Let me tell you something else that’s funny. I’m hot. I’m sweating. I itch. Now—laugh!”
“I don’t feel like laughing,” Kennon said. “I feel the same way.”
They approached the edge of the Pit carefully. Kennon kept checking the radiation counter. The needle slowly rose and steadied at one-half roentgen per hour as he thrust the probe over the rim of the depression. “It’s fine, so far,” he said encouragingly. “We could take this much for quite a while even without suits.” He lowered himself over the edge, sliding down the gentle slope.
“How is it down there?” Copper called. The intercom crackled in his ear.
“Fine—barely over one roentgen per hour. With these suits we could stay here indefinitely.” The sigh of relief was music in her ears. “This place is barely lukewarm.”
“That’s what you think,” Copper said.
“I mean radiation warm,” Kennon said. “Stay up there and watch me. I may need some things.”
“All right.” Copper squirmed inside the hot suit. The thing was an oven. She hoped that Kennon didn’t plan to work in the daytime. It would be impossible.
Kennon gingerly approached the ship. It was half buried in the loose debris and ash that had fallen or blown into the pit during the centuries it had rested there. It was old—incredibly old. The hull design was ancient—riveted sheets of millimeter-thick durilium. Ships hadn’t been built like that in over two thousand years. And the ovoid shape was reminiscent of the even more ancient spindizzy design. A hyperspace converter like that couldn’t be less than four millennia old. It was a museum piece, but the blue-black hull was as smooth and unblemished as the day it had left fabrication.