"Came to Neptune?"
"Sure. On Earth, you can stand even a winter day, so you have to. Here, since the local climate would kill you in a second or two, you're always well protected from it." Gilchrist waved at the viewport. "Only I wish they didn't have that bloody window in my lab. Every time I look out, it reminds me that just beyond the wall nitrogen is a solid."
"Yo comprendo," said Alemán. "The power of suggestion. Even now, at your words, I feel a chill."
Gilchrist started with surprise. "You know, somehow I have the same—Just a minute." He went over to a workbench. His inframicrometer had an air thermometer attached to make temperature corrections.
"What the devil," he muttered. "It is cooled off. Only 18 degrees in here. It's supposed to be 21."
"Some fluctuation, in temperature as in ozone content and humidity," reminded Alemán. "That is required for optimum health."
"Not this time of day, it shouldn't be varying." Gilchrist was reminded of his cigaret as it nearly burned his fingers. He stubbed it out and took another and inhaled to light it.
"I'm going to raise Jahangir and complain," he said. "This could play merry hell with exact measurements."
Alemán trotted after him as he went to the door. It was manually operated, and the intercoms were at particular points instead of every room. You had to forego a number of Earthside comforts here.
There was a murmuring around him as he hurried down the corridor. Some doors stood open, showing the various chemical and biological sections. The physicists had their own dome, on the other side of the Hill, and even so were apt to curse the stray fields generated here. If they had come this far to get away from solar radiations, it was only reasonable, as anyone but a chemist could see, that—