"This bunk room should appeal to an apartment house addict. I had about eleven feet I could use to make it, and it is just a bit crowded."
Considering Waterson's six-feet-two, a room eleven feet long, ten feet high, and about as wide, would certainly be crowded if there was anything or anyone else in the room. As the bunk room was also dining room, gallery, and chart room, it was decidedly crowded. One thing that particularly interested Gale was a small screen on which were a series of small lights, projected from the rear.
"What is that, Steve?" he inquired.
"That is my chart. It is the only kind of a chart you could well expect on board a space ship. The lights are really moving and maintain the relative positions of the planets. I think we will go to Mars first, because it is now as close as it will be for some time. I want to go to Venus soon, but that is on the other side of the sun. I will find that there are detours even in space when I go there!"
"That's quite a chart! I suppose you have more accurate ones too?"
"No, I have no need of more accurate ones. I start for my objective, and it is so big I can't miss it!"
"That's true too! But I haven't seen any apparatus for taking care of your air. I suspect that door over there hides something."
"It does. It leads to the store room and the apparatus room. There are all the tools I carry, the air purifier and water renewer. Remember that the break-up of the atomic energy gives me unlimited amounts of electricity, so I have all the electric power I can use. I find that there is a way to electrolyse carbon dioxide to carbon and oxygen. In this manner I recover the oxygen for the air—at least part of the necessary oxygen—and at the same time remove the menace of the CO2. There is considerable oxygen fixed as H2O, however, so I installed an electrolyser to take care of that. The moisture of the air is in this way kept down to a comfortable maximum. The same apparatus is useful for reducing the water. All the water I have I must carry in tanks, which require space. I am able to make them considerably smaller by taking the water, passing it through this electrolyser, reducing it to hydrogen and oxygen, burning them to water again, and thus getting pure H2O. The one difficulty is in getting rid of the heat. Remember that all the heat I lose I must lose by radiation. But the sun is radiating to me. I receive heat at exactly the same rate the Earth does and I have no protective atmosphere, so the tendency is to reach a super-tropical temperature. The easiest solution of this problem is to go with the ship at such an angle to the sun that the shadow of the exposed surface shades the greater portion of the ship, then by adjusting the angle of the ship, I can adjust the ratio of radiating to receiving area to any value I wish, and get almost any temperature I need."
"That is an idea, I never heard of electrolysing carbon dioxide, though. Tell me—how do you do it?"
"That is a process I developed. It requires considerable explaining. However, I am doubtful whether it wouldn't have been easier to convert the stuff directly to oxygen by transmutation."