Johnson glanced at his watch out of sight of the screen. "Exactly thirty-three and one half hours ago. Those men are —"
"Well, you've got ground joint suits at Copernicus!"
"We'd switched over on the Queen, remember?" Johnson's teeth showed just a trifle now. "We believed in the reputation of Kimberly, and had the locks built for your new suits. We didn't have an iron pants aboard. In the terminal every blasted suit had been shipped out on an emergency call to that freight that exploded four thousand miles off course. You do read the papers?"
"And your —"
"My men are still there and will continue to be there for two hours and fifteen minutes more when Capitol's ship, Carolinia, whose owners have not been such fools as to adopt Kimberly suits, will let down and kindly assist my men back in."
"You could have —" Kimberly fumbled.
"No, we couldn't. Medford, the home office, our engineer's staff, and everybody else has been trying to figure it out for over thirty hours. A total blank. They couldn't get the men back in.
"There are just two more items, and then I'm through. Number one: Your suits are haunted."
"Haunted!"
"Screams like a built-in banshee nearly drove the men crazy for a while until they were laid out. It was so high-pitched they could scarcely hear it at first, but it was there. Is it one of your improvements? I didn't notice anything about it in this spread you have in 'Rocket Flight'."