The door closed, and the pumps began to work. The men were wearing Space Service Suit Three. For every environment, for every conceivable emergency, a suit had been built—if, of course, a suit could be built for it. Nobody had yet built a suit for walking about in the middle of a sun, but, then, nobody had ever volunteered to try anything like that.
They were all called “spacesuits” because most of them could be worn in the vacuum of space, but most of them weren’t designed for that type of work. Suit One—a light, easily manipulated, almost skin-tight covering, was the real spacesuit. It was perfect for work in interstellar space, where there was a microscopic amount of radiation incident to the suit, no air, and almost nil gravity. For exterior repairs on the outside of a ship in free fall a long way from any star, Spacesuit One was the proper garb.
But, a suit that worked fine in space didn’t necessarily work on other planets, unless it worked fine on the planet it was used on.
A Moon Suit isn’t a Mars Suit isn’t a Venus Suit isn’t a Triton Suit isn’t a....
Carry it on from there.
Number Three was insulated against a frigid but relatively non-corrosive atmosphere. When the pumps in the air lock began pulling out the methane-laden atmosphere, they began to bulge slightly, but not excessively. Then nitrogen, extracted from the ammonia snow that was so plentiful, filled the room, diluting the remaining inflammable gases to a harmless concentration.
Then that mixture was pumped out, to be replaced by a mixture of approximately 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen—common, or garden-variety, air.
Mike the Angel cracked his helmet and sniffed. “Guk,” he said. “If I ever faint and someone gives me smelling salts, I’ll flay him alive with a coarse rasp.”
“Yessir,” said Chief Multhaus, as he began to shuck his suit. “But if I had my druthers, I’d druther you’d figure out some way to get all the ammonia out of the joints of this suit.”
The other men, sniffing and coughing, agreed in attitude if not in voice.