"How long do you think it will take?" asked Barnes hopefuly.
"No telling," said Joe. "It will take a while to build up sufficient concentration of acid for them to notice. We're a long way from the control room —"
Nobody said anything. An hour and a half left. Past turn-about time for Barnes. They were going to have to watch him die, Joe thought. But they wouldn't see him. Hidden behind the blank steel face of the helmet, his face wouldn't be seen by anyone. It would be like dying all alone.
"You lie down," he said abruptly, "Breathe as slowly as possible. Close your eyes and stop stewing. The rest of us will get busy and rig up some kind of an electrolysis setup so that the moment we get out of here, we'll blow out one of these water tanks and rig up the other one to collect some oxygen. We can get in there and equalise our suit supplies and replenish them. Maybe a couple of us can hole up in the tank and let the others run the ship back home by using the supply of the four suits. Take it easy, Barnes. We're all going to get out of this."
He didn't believe that any more, he thought, but it helped to say it. The water line had cost them too much time. Turn-about was too far gone, even with such added velocity as they might obtain during return. Litchfield could go another hour and a half. He might make it alone.
The work kept their minds from degenerating into circularity of thought. They had to exercise their brains to rip out the right power lines while they were hot, and feed them to the terminals they had rigged up. With a collector for the oxygen and hydrogen, they were all ready to be inserted in a tank as soon as the gas could be blown free by opening the chambers to space.
And then they had done all that they could do. There was nothing at all to do but wait. They lay on the floor to conserve their oxygen. Joe kept thinking maybe there was something they had overlooked — something utterly simple that would enable them to move right out of the chamber.
Barnes had been quiet for a long time, Joe wanted to talk to the boy, but he couldn't think of anything to say. It was no good telling him he wasn't going to die — because it was a thousand to one chance he was.
When there was only fifteen minutes suppy left to Barnes, Joe said, "Barnes - ?"
Only after a long pause did the technician answer, and then his voice was weak and sleepy sounding. "Yes - ?"