Captain Pinkham bent down and read aloud from the nayrust plate set into the back of the spacesuit.
"'Bernard Patent Slugjet Suit, size 24-B patented' ... here it is. 'Instructions for reviving occupant. The man in this suit is alive if the translucent face plate is tinted orange.'"
"It is," said Bill Calico with eagerness.
"'Unscrew the seven small x-screws around face plate. Depress lever Z on right side of chest plate. Loosen gorget, shoulder pieces, pallettes, brassarts, cuisses....'" They were following the instructions as he read. He thought, these suits were terrific, they were the best. But you had to have a billion dollars behind your expedition or you couldn't afford 'em. Each one cost half as much as a regular-size moon rocket! They shouldn't have stopped making them, though. They ought to have tried bringing down the cost. One of these could save a man's life when nothing else in God's universe could; and a man's life is surely worth as much as half a moon rocket?
The Bernard Slugjet Suit. Guaranteed to keep a guy alive for a minimum of 250 years in free space. Guaranteed to let him emerge healthy and—miraculously—sane, provided he was picked up within the time limit.
You were jetting toward the edge of the galaxy, say. Your ship ran into trouble. A big meteor tore out your belly, or your fuel gave out, or any of a million things happened to crack up the beautiful great spaceship that was your vehicle and your pride and almost you, an extension of yourself, an expression of your yearning to conquer the stars. So you got into your slugjet suit and walked out an air-lock, if you had enough warning, that is. And there you were in space.
Your suit was actually a miniature spaceship itself; if there was land anywhere near, you aimed for it, loosed your powerful shoulder jets, and shot toward it. The suit had a range of about five hundred thousand miles, which was often enough.
But suppose it wasn't. Then you just stayed there in black space, and you started to touch buttons in the big gloves, to pull levers on the chest, and to activate other circuits by the sound of your voice. And the suit became a world for you, a world that kept you healthy and sane for a quarter of a millennium.
Your life processes were slowed down to a pace of only a crawl and a mumble, next door to death. Your breathing couldn't be detected. Your heart beat six times to the hour. Drugs did it, and vapors, the depressants of a hundred planets gathered and refined by Bernard for his suits.
You didn't sleep; you didn't need to. You were a slug, a worm in a cocoon, awake in an ultra-slow-motion way. In 250 years, you aged about fifteen. The suits were supposed to have a maximum efficiency of a thousand years; you came out an old man at the end of that time, maybe, but it was an even bet that you did come out.