Garry took the food pills, chewing them slowly to get what little flavor there was in them. Then he finished off with the water, which was little more than enough to wet his throat.
“Gee, the captain has really rationed the water, hasn’t he?” Garry whispered.
“He cut it back even further this morning,” Patch replied. “Know why? Because nobody came knocking on our air lock as he had hoped maybe they would. On top of that, I heard him say he was going to run another close inventory on all our life-supporting items to see how much is left.”
“Gosh, do you think he’s afraid no one will be knocking any time soon?”
“I don’t know,” Patch replied, “but he has been frowning quite a bit this morning.”
The captain presently made it clear to all why he had been doing so much frowning.
“Frankly,” he said, “I thought those people at the mining settlement would have had plenty of time while we slept to pay us a visit. If our SOS reached them soon after we began sending, as it should have, they should have had a flier over here within a few hours’ time. Our chief essentials for staying alive are our food, water, air, and power supply which is necessary to keep us warm. It’s several hundred degrees below zero outside, in case you haven’t thought about it.”
They took another inventory, and the results were not very heartening.
“We’re using up much too much of our battery power,” Captain Eaton said. “That’s the weakest link in our chain of existence. I didn’t realize that yesterday when we had the lights on for reading. From now on until someone comes, we’ll have to do without light altogether except when necessary. That means we’ll have to do our reading by earthshine and our one flashlight. We may have some strained eyes, but that’s the best we can do. We’ll also have to reduce our heat a little to save on power that way too.”
“Captain, do you think we should check the condition of the battery in the outside transmitter?” Isaac asked.