Helene spoke once while we poked through the wreckage the next "day."
She said: "I've found the rest of the welding torch. It works." She didn't have to. I could see the cloud of steam from half a mile away.
When we returned to the tractor she took off her helmet and went through the motions without any hesitation, but obviously without feeling any more than I did—just the slightly damp contact of cold lips.
"I'm not tired," she said, "I'll start driving." She put on her helmet and climbed down through the airlock.
I hung up my helmet and started to peel off the rest of my suit, then stopped and went to the forward window. I tried to imagine a certain amount of grace in the movements as she clambered up the side of the cab and got in through the hole I'd cut in the crumpled roof. But I've never known anybody who could move gracefully in a space suit.
Except Mary.
Helene was not graceful. Not even a little.
I watched her start the engine and warm it carefully, constantly checking the instruments. There isn't much that can go wrong with a closed-cycle mercury vapor atomic, even when the reaction is catalytically maintained to keep size and weight down. But if anything did go wrong, it would probably stay wrong. We didn't have any spare mercury.
After we'd been moving for about fifteen minutes, I went aft and checked the 'dozer. It was riding nicely at the end of a towbar that had been designed to pull the trailer it was supposed to have ridden on. If it would just stay there—
I watched for a while, then finished peeling off my suit and crawled into my bunk.