Hardwick felt a sensation of incredulous shock. Werner wrung his hands.
"If I could only find the man who made that faulty tank!" he said thickly. "He's killed all of us! All! Unless we get to solid ground in the Arctic!"
The Sector Chief said calmly:
"That's why I won't let them in, Hardwick. Our storage tanks go down to bedrock. The leaked fuel—warmed up, now—is seeping along bedrock and eating at other tanks, besides being absorbed generally by the soil and dissolving in the ground-water. We've pulled all personnel out of all the area it could have seeped down to."
Hardwick felt slightly cold at the back of his neck.
"I suspect," he said wryly, "that they came out on tiptoe, holding their breaths, and that they were careful not to drop anything or scrape their chairs when they got up to leave. I would have! Anything, of course, could set it off. But it is bound to go anyhow! Of course! Now I see why we couldn't make a rocket-landing!"
The chilly feeling seemed to spread as he realized more fully. When ship-fuel is refrigerated during its manufacture, it is about as safe a substance as can be imagined—so long as it is kept refrigerated. It is an energy-chemical compound, of atoms bound together with forced-valence linkages. But enormous amounts of energy are required to force valences upon reluctant atoms.
