"I can call in the civilians!" said Sandringham. "You've mopped up the leaked stuff! It couldn't have been done—"
"Not anywhere but here, with bedrock handy just underneath, and slanting," said Hardwick. "But I wouldn't advise it. Tell them they can come if they want to. They'll sort of drift in. I want to tap some more ship-fuel for the rest of those bore-holes. From the tanks that haven't leaked."
Sandringham hesitated.
"Twenty thousand holes," said Hardwick tiredly. "Each one had a six-hundred block of frozen saturated brine dumped in it, with roughly one pound of ship-fuel in solution. You have gone that far. Might as well go the rest of the way. How's the barometer?"
"Up a tenth," said Sandringham. "Still rising."
Hardwick blinked at him, because he had trouble keeping his eyes open now.
"Let's ride it, Sandringham!"
Sandringham hesitated. Then he said:
"Go ahead."
Hardwick waved his arms at his associates, whom he admired with great fervor in his then-foggy mind, because they were always ready to work when it was needed, and it had not stopped being needed for five days running. He explained very lucidly that there were only three more miles of holes to be filled up, and therefore they would just draw so much of ship-fuel and blend it carefully with an appropriate amount of suitable chilled brine and then freeze it in appropriate sausages—