"Shut up, Arden," snapped the man. "People will think that I've been
kissing you."
"If someone else was taking advantage of the situation," she said, "you
got gypped. I thought I was kissing you and I cooked with gas!"
"Did you ever try that before?" asked Channing interestedly.
"Why?" she asked.
"I liked it. I merely wondered, if you'd worked it on other men, what
there was about you that kept you single."
"They all died after the first application," she said. "They couldn't
take it."
"Let me outta here! I get the implication. I am the first bird that
hasn't died, hey?" He yawned luxuriously.
"Company or the hour?" asked Arden.
"Can't be either," he said. "Come on, let's break a bottle of beer
open. I'm dry!"
"I've got a slight headache," she told him, "From what, I can't
imagine."
"I haven't a headache, but I'm sort of logy."
"What have you been doing?" asked Arden. "Haven't seen you for a couple
of days."
"Nothing worth mentioning. Had an idea a couple of days ago and went to
work on it."
"Haven't been working overtime or missing breakfast?"
"Nope."
"Then I don't see why you should be ill. I can explain my headache away
by attributing it to eyestrain. Since Billyboy came here, and censored
the movies to the bone, the darned things flicker like anything. But
eyestrain doesn't create an autointoxication. So, my fine fellow, what
have you been drinking?"
"Nothing that I haven't been drinking since I first took to my second
bottlehood some years ago."
"You wouldn't be suffering from a hangover from that hangover you had a
couple of weeks ago?"
"Nope. I swore off. Never again will I try to drink a whole quart of
Two Moons in one evening. It got me."
"It had you for a couple of days," laughed Arden. "All to itself."
Don Channing said nothing. He recalled, all too vividly, the rolling
of the tummy that ensued after that session with the only fighter that
hadn't yet been beaten: Old John Barleycorn.
"How are you coming on with Burbank?" asked Arden. "I haven't heard
a rave for--well, ever since Monday morning's conference. Three days
without a nasty dig at Our Boss. That's a record."
"Give the devil his due. He's been more than busy placating irate
citizens. That last debacle with the beam control gave him a real
Moscow winter. His reforms came to a stop whilst he entrenched. But
he's been doing an excellent job of squirming out from under. Of
course, it has been helped by the fact that even though the service
was rotten for a few hours, the customers couldn't rush out to some
other agency to get communications with the other planets."
"Sort of: 'Take us, as lousy as we are?'"
"That's it."
* * * * *
Channing opened the door to his apartment and Arden went in. Channing
followed, and then stopped cold.
"Great Jeepers!" he said in an awed tone. "If I didn't know--"
"Why, Don! What's so startling?"
"Have you noticed?" he asked. "It smells like the inside of a chicken
coop in here!"
Arden sniffed. "It does sort of remind me of something that died and
couldn't get out of its skin." Arden smiled. "I'll hold my breath. Any
sacrifice for a drink."
"That isn't the point. This is purified air. It should be as sweet as a
baby's breath."
"Some baby," whistled Arden. "What's baby been drinking?"
"It wasn't cow-juice. What I've been trying to put over is that the air
doesn't seem to have been changed in here for nine weeks."
Channing went to the ventilator and lit a match. The flame bent over,
flickered, and went out.
"Air intake is O.K.," he said. "Maybe it is I. Bring on that bottle,
Channing; don't keep the lady waiting."
He yawned again, deeply and jaw-stretchingly. Arden yawned, too, and
the thought of both of them stretching their jaws to the breaking-off
point made both of them laugh foolishly.
"Arden, I'm going to break one bottle of beer with you, after which I'm
going to take you home, kiss you good night, and toss you into your
own apartment. Then I'm coming back here and I'm going to hit the hay!"
Arden took a long, deep breath. "I'll buy that," she said. "And
tonight, it wouldn't take much persuasion to induce me to snooze right
here in this chair!"
"Oh, fine," cheered Don. "That would fix me up swell with the
neighbors. I'm not going to get shotgunned into anything like that!"
"Don't be silly," said Arden.
"From the look in your eye," said Channing, "I'd say that you were just
about to do that very thing. I was merely trying to dissolve any ideas
that you might have."
"Don't bother," she said pettishly. "I haven't any ideas. I'm as free
as you are, and I intend to stay that way!"
Channing stood up. "The next thing we know, we'll be fighting," he
observed. "Stand up, Arden. Shake."
Arden stood up, shook herself, and then looked at Channing with a
strange light in her eyes. "I feel sort of dizzy," she admitted. "And
everything irritates me."
She passed a hand over her eyes wearily. Then, with a visible effort,
she straightened. She seemed to throw off her momentary ill feeling
instantly. She smiled at Channing and was her normal self in less than
a minute.
"What is it?" she asked. "Do you feel funny, too?"
"I do!" he said. "I don't want that beer. I want to snooze."
"When Channing would prefer snoozing to boozing he is sick," she said.
"Come on, fellow, take me home."
Slowly they walked down the long hallway. They said nothing. Arm in arm
they went, and when they reached Arden's door, their good-night kiss
lacked enthusiasm. "See you in the morning," said Don.
Arden looked at him. "That was a little flat. We'll try it
again--tomorrow or next week."
Don Channing's sleep was broken by dreams. He was warm. His dreams
depicted him in a humid, airless chamber, and he was forced to breathe
that same stale air again and again. He awoke in a hot sweat, weak and
feeling--lousy!
He dressed carelessly. He shaved hit-or-miss. His morning coffee tasted
flat and sour. He left the apartment in a bad mood, and bumped into
Arden at the corner of the hall.
"Hello," she said. "I feel rotten. But you have improved. Or is that
passionate breathing just a lack of fresh air?"
"Hell! That's it!" he said. He snapped up his wrist watch, which
was equipped with a stop-watch hand. He looked about, and finding a
man sitting on a bench, apparently taking it easy while waiting for
someone, Channing clicked the sweep hand into gear. He started to count
the man's respiration.
"What gives?" asked Arden, "What's 'It'? Why are you so excited? Did I
say something?"
"You did," said Channing after fifteen seconds. "That bird's
respiration is better than fifty! This whole place is filled to the
gills with carbon dioxide. Come on, Arden, let's get going!"
Channing led the girl by several yards by the time that they were
within sight of the elevator. He waited for her, and then sent the car
upward at a full throttle. Minutes passed, and they could feel that
stomach-rising sensation that comes when gravity is lessened. Arden
clasped her hands over her middle and hugged. She squirmed and giggled.
"You've been up to the axis before," said Channing. "Take long, deep
breaths."
The car came to a stop with a slowing effect. A normal braking stop
would have catapulted them against the ceiling. "Come on," he grinned
at her, "here's where we make time!"
Channing looked up at the little flight of stairs that led to the
innermost level. He winked at Arden and jumped. He passed up through
the opening easily. "Jump," he commanded. "Don't use the stairs."
Arden jumped. She sailed upward, and as she passed through the opening,
Channing caught her by one arm and stopped her flight. "At that speed
you'd go right on across," he said.
She looked up, and there about two hundred feet overhead she could see
the opposite wall.
Channing snapped on the lights. They were in a room two hundred feet
in diameter and three hundred feet long. "We're at the center of the
station," Channing informed her. "Beyond that bulkhead is the air lock.
On the other side of the other bulkhead, we have the air plant, the
storage spaces, and several rooms of machinery."
"Come on," he said. He took her by the hand and with a kick he
propelled himself along on a long, curving course to the opposite side
of the inner cylinder. He gained the opposite bulkhead as well.
"Now, that's what I call traveling," said Arden. "But my tummy goes
_whoosh_, _whoosh_ every time we cross the center."
Channing operated a heavy door. They went in through rooms full of
machinery and into rooms stacked to the center with boxes; stacked from
the wall to the center and then packed with springs. Near the axis of
the cylinder, things weighed so little that packing was necessary to
keep them from floating around.
"I feel giddy," said Arden.
"High in oxygen," said he. "The CO_{2}, drops to the bottom, being
heavier. Then, too, the air is thinner up here because centrifugal
force swings the whole out to the rim. Out there we are so used to
'down' that here, a half mile above--or to the center, rather--we have
trouble in saying, technically, what we mean. Watch!"
He left Arden standing and walked rapidly around the inside of the
cylinder. Soon he was standing on the steel plates directly over her
head. She looked up, and shook her head.
"I know why," she called, "but it still makes me dizzy. Come down from
up there or I'll be sick."
Channing made a neat dive from his position above her head. He did it
merely by jumping upward from his place toward her place, apparently
hanging head down from the ceiling. He turned a neat flip-flop in the
air and landed easily beside her. Immediately, for both of them, things
became right-side-up again.
Channing opened the door to the room marked: "Air Plant." He stepped
in, snapped on the lights, and gasped in amazement.
"Hell!" he groaned. The place was empty. Completely empty. Absolutely,
and irrevocably vacant. Oh, there was some dirt on the floor and some
trash in the corners, and a trail of scratches on the floor to show
that the life giving air plant had been removed, hunk by hunk, out
through another door at the far end of the room.
"Whoa, Tillie!" screamed Don. "We've been stabbed! Arden, get on the
type and have ... no, wait a minute until we find out a few more things
about this!"
* * * * *
They made record time back to the office level. They found Burbank in
his office, leaning back, and talking to someone on the phone.
Channing tried to interrupt, but Burbank removed his nose from the
telephone long enough to snarl, "Can't you see I'm busy? Have you no
manners or respect?"
Channing, fuming inside, swore inwardly. He sat down with a show of
being calm and folded his hands over his abdomen like the famed statue
of Buddha. Arden looked at him, and for all the trouble they were in,
she couldn't help giggling. Channing, tall, lanky, and strong, looked
as little as possible like the popular, pudgy figure of the Sitting
Buddha.
A minute passed.
Burbank hung up the phone.
"Where does Venus Equilateral get its air from?" snapped Burbank.
"That's what I want--"
"Answer me, please. I'm worried."
"So am I. Something--"
"Tell me first, from what source does Venus Equilateral get its fresh
air?"
"From the air plant. And that is--"
"There _must_ be more than one," said Burbank thoughtfully.
"There's only one."
"There must be more than one. We couldn't live if there weren't," said
the Director.
"Wishing won't make it so. There is only one."
"I tell you, there must be another. Why, I went into the one up at
the axis day before yesterday and found that instead of a bunch of
machinery, running smoothly, purifying air, and sending it out to the
various parts of the station, all there was was a veritable jungle of
weeds. Those weeds, Mr. Channing, looked as though they must have been
put in there years ago. Now, where did the air-purifying machinery go?"
Channing listened to the latter half of Burbank's speech with his chin
at half-mast. He looked as though a feather would knock him clear
across the office.
"I had some workmen clear the weeds out. I intend to replace the air
machinery as soon as I can get some new material sent from Terra."
Channing managed to blink. It was an effort. "You had workmen toss the
weeds out--" he repeated dully. "The weeds--"
There was silence for a minute, Burbank studied the man in the chair
as though Channing were a piece of statuary. Channing was just as
motionless. "Channing, man, what ails you--" began Burbank. The sound
of Burbank's voice aroused Channing from his shocked condition.
Channing leaped to his feet. He landed on his heels, spun, and snapped
at Arden: "Get on the type. Have 'em slap as many oxy-drums on the
fastest ship as they've got! Get 'em here at full throttle. Tell 'em
to load up the pilot and crew with gravanol and not to spare the
horsepower! Scram!"
Arden gasped. She fled from the office.
"Burbank, what did you think an air plant was?" snapped Channing.
"Why, isn't it some sort of purifying machinery?" asked the wondering
Director.
"What better purifying machine is there than a plot of grass?" shouted
Channing. "Weeds, grass, flowers, trees, alfalfa, wheat, or anything
that grows and uses chlorophyll. We breathe oxygen, exhale CO_{2}.
Plants inhale CO_{2}, and exude oxygen. An air plant means just that.
It is a specialized type of Martian sawgrass that is more efficient
than anything else in the system for inhaling dead air and revitalizing
it. And you've tossed the weeds out!" Channing snorted in anger. "We've
spent years getting that plant so that it will grow just right. It got
so good that the CO_{2} detectors weren't even needed. The balance was
so adjusted that they haven't even been turned on for three or four
years. They were just another source of unnecessary expense. Why, save
for a monthly inspection, that room isn't even opened, so efficient is
the Martian sawgrass. We, Burbank, are losing oxygen!"
The Director grew white. "I didn't know," he said.
"Well, you know now. Get on your horse and do something. At least,
Burbank, stay out of my way while I do something."
"You have a free hand," said Burbank. His voice sounded beaten.
Channing left the office of the Director and headed for the chem
lab. "How much potassium chlorate, nitrate, sulphate, and other
oxygen-bearing compounds have you?" he asked. "That includes mercuric
oxide, spare water, or anything else that will give us oxygen if broken
down."
There was a ten-minute wait until the members of the chem lab took a
hurried inventory.
"Good," said Channing. "Start breaking it down. Collect all the oxygen
you can in containers. This is the business! It has priority! Anything,
no matter how valuable, must be scrapped if it can facilitate the
gathering of oxygen. God knows, there isn't by half enough--not even a
tenth. But try, anyway."
* * * * *
Channing headed out of the chemistry laboratory and into the
electronics lab. "Jimmie," he shouted, "get a couple of stone jars
and get an electrolysis outfit running. Fling the hydrogen out of a
convenient outlet into space and collect the oxygen. Water, I mean. Use
tap water, right out of the faucet."
"Yeah, but--"
"Jimmie, if we don't breathe, what chance have we to go on drinking?
I'll tell you when to stop."
"O.K., Doc," said Jimmie.
"And look. As soon as you get that running, set up a CO_{2} indicator
and let me know the percentage at the end of each hour! Get me?"
"I take it that something has happened to the air plant?"
"It isn't functioning," said Channing shortly. He left the puzzled
Jimmie and headed for the beam-control room. Jimmie continued to
wonder about the air plant. How in the devil could an air plant cease
functioning unless it were--_dead_! Jimmie stopped wondering and began
to operate on his electrolysis set-up furiously.
Channing found the men in the beam-control room worried and ill at
ease. The fine co-ordination that made them expert in their line was
ebbing. The nervous work demanded perfect motor control, excellent
perception, and a fine power of reasoning. The perceptible lack of
oxygen at this high level was taking its toll already.
"Look, fellows, we're in a mess. Until further notice, take five-minute
shifts. We've got about thirty hours to go. If the going gets tough,
drop it to three-minute shifts. But, fellows, keep those beams centered
until you drop!"
"We'll keep 'em going if we have to call our wives up here to run 'em
for us," said one man. "What's up?"
"Air plant's sour. Losing oxy. Got a shipload coming out from Terra, be
here in thirty hours. But upon you fellows will rest the responsibility
of keeping us in touch with the rest of the system. If you fail, we
could call for help until hell freezes us all in--and no one would hear
us!"
"We'll keep 'em rolling," said a little fellow who had to sit on a tall
stool to get even with the controls.
* * * * *
Channing looked out of the big, faceted plexiglass dome that covered
the entire end of the Venus Equilateral Station. "Here messages go
in and out," he mused. "The other end brings us things that take our
breath away."
Channing was referring to the big air lock at the other end of the
station, three miles away, right through the center.
At the center of the dome, there was a sighting 'scope. It kept
Polaris on a marked circle, keeping the station exactly even with
the Terrestrial North. About the periphery of the dome, looking out
across space, the beam-control operators were sitting, each with a
hundred-foot parabolic reflector below his position, outside the dome,
and under the rim of the transparent howl. These reflectors shot the
interworld signals across space in tight beams, and the men, half the
time anticipating the vagaries of space-warp, kept them centered on the
proper, shining speck in that field of stars.
Above his head the stars twinkled. Puny man, setting his will against
the monstrous void. Puny man, dependent upon atmosphere. "'Nature
abhors a vacuum,' said Torricelli," groaned Channing. "Nuts! If nature
abhorred a vacuum, why did she make so much of it?"
* * * * *
Arden Westland entered the apartment without knocking. "I'd give my
right arm up to here for a cigarette," she said, marking above the
elbow with the other hand.
"Na-hah," said Channing. "Can't burn oxygen."
"I know. I'm tired, I'm cold, and I'm ill. Anything you can do for a
lady?"
"Not as much as I'd like to do," said Channing. "I can't help much.
We've got most of the place stopped off with the air-tight doors. We've
been electrolyzing water, baking KClO_{3} and everything else we can
get oxy out of. I've a crew of men trying to absorb the CO_{2} content
and we are losing. Of course, I've known all along that we couldn't
support the station on the meager supplies we have on hand. But we'll
win in the end. Our microcosmic world is getting a shot in the arm in a
few hours that will re-set the balance."
"I don't see why we didn't prepare for this emergency," said Arden.
"This station is well balanced. There are enough people here and enough
space to make a little world of our own. We can establish a balance
that is pretty darned close to perfect. The imperfections are taken
care of by influxes of supplies from the system. Until Burbank upset
the balance, we could go on forever, utilizing natural purification of
air and water. We grow a few vegetables and have some meat critters
to give milk and steak. The energy to operate Venus Equilateral is
supplied from the uranium pile. Atomic power, if you please. Why
should we burden ourselves with a lot of cubic feet of supplies that
would take up room necessary to maintain our balance? We are not in
bad shape. We'll live, though we'll all be a bunch of tired, irritable
people who yawn in one another's faces."
"And after it is over?"
"We'll establish the balance. Then we'll settle down again. We can take
up where we left off," said Don.
"Not quite. Venus Equilateral has been seared by fire. We'll be tougher
and less tolerant of outsiders. If we were a closed corporation before,
we'll be tighter than a vacuum-packed coffee can afterwards. And the
first bird that cracks us will get hissed at."
Three superliners hove into sight at the end of thirty-one hours.
They circled the station, signaling by helio. They approached the air
lock end of the station and made contact. The air lock was opened and
space-suited figures swarmed over the South End Landing Stage. A stream
of big oxygen tanks was brought into the air lock, admitted, and taken
to the last bulwark of huddled people on the fourth level.
From one of the ships there came a horde of men carrying huge square
trays of dirt and green, growing sawgrass.
For six hours, Venus Equilateral was the scene of wild, furious
activity. The dead air was blown out of bad areas, and the hissing
of oxygen tanks was heard in every room. Gradually the people left
the fourth level and returned to their rightful places. The station
rang with laughter once more, and business, stopped short for want of
breath, took a deep lungful of fresh air and went back to work.
The superliners left. But not without taking a souvenir. Francis
Burbank went with them. His removal notice was on the first ship, and
Don Channing's appointment as Director of Venus Equilateral was on the
second.
Happily he entered the Director's office once more. He carried with him
all the things that he had removed just a few short weeks before. This
time he was coming to stay.
Arden entered the office behind him. "Home again?" she asked.
"Yop," he grinned at her. "Open file B, will you, and break out a
container of my favorite beverage?"
"Sure thing," she said.
There came a shout of glee. "Break out four glasses," she was told from
behind. It was Walt Franks and Joe.
It was Arden that proposed the toast. "Here's to a closed corporation,"
she said. They drank on that.
She went over beside Don and took his arm. "You see?" she said, looking
up into his eyes. "We aren't the same. Things have changed since
Burbank came, and went. Haven't they?"
"They have," laughed Channing. "And now that you are my secretary, it
is no longer proper for you to shine up to me like that. People will
talk."
"What's he raving about?" asked Joe.
Channing answered, "It is considered highly improper for a secretary to
make passes at her boss. Think of what people will say; think of his
wife and kids."
"You have neither."
"People?" asked Channing innocently.
"No--you ape--the other."
"Maybe so," nodded Don, "but it is still in bad taste for a secretary--"
"No man can use that tone of voice on me!" stormed Arden with a glint
in her eye. "I resign! You can't call me a secretary!"
"But Arden--darling--"
Arden relaxed into the crook of Channing's arm. She winked at Walt and
Joe. "Me--," she said, "I've been promoted!"
_Interlude:_
_Maintaining Communications through the worst of interference was a
type of problem in which dire necessity demanded a solution. Often
there are other problems of less demanding nature. These are sometimes
called "projects" because they may be desirable but are not born of
dire necessity._
_Barring interference, the problem of keeping communication with
another planet across a hundred million miles of interplanetary space
is partially solved by the fact that you can see your target! Keeping
the cross-hairs in a telescope properly centered is a technical job
more arduous than difficult._
_But seeing a spacecraft is another problem. Consider the relative
sizes of spacecraft and planet. Where Terra is eight thousand miles in
diameter, the largest of spacecraft is eight hundred feet long. Reduced
to a common denominator and a simple ratio, it reads that the earth is
50,000 times as large as the largest spacecraft. Now go outside and
take a look at Venus. At normal distances, it is a mote in the sky. Yet
Venus is only slightly smaller than the earth. Reduce Venus by fifty
thousand times, and no astronomer would ever suspect its existence._
_Then take the invisible mote and place it in a volume of
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles and he who found the needle in a
haystack is a piker by comparison._
_It could have been lives at stake that drove the job out of the
"project" class and into the "necessity" stage. The fact that it was
ebb and flow of a mundane thing like money may lower the quality of
glamor._
_But there it was--a problem that cried out for a solution; a man who
was willing to pay for the attempt; and a group of technicians more
than happy to tackle the job._