Ali had ready the artificial oxgy tanks--they must
move fast once they began the actual task of clearing and restocking the
hydro.
"Hope you have a good story ready," he commented as the other three
joined him by the hatch to don the suits which would enable them to cross
the airless, heatless surface of the asteroid.
"We have a poisoned hydro," Dane said.
"One look at the plants we dump will give you the lie. They won't accept
our story without investigation."
Dane was aroused. Did Ali think he was a stupid as all that? "If you'd
take a look in there now you'd believe me," he snapped.
"What did you do?" Ali sounded genuinely interested.
"Chucked a heated can of lacoil over a good section. It's wilting down
fast in big patches."
Rip snorted. "Good old lacoil. You drink it, you wash in it, and now you
kill off the Hydro with it. Maybe we can give the company an extra
testimonial for the official jabber and collect when we hit Terra. All
right--Weeks," he spoke to the little man, "you listen in on the
com--it's tuned to our helmet units. We'll climb into these pipe suits
and see how many tears we can wring out of the Eysies with our sad, sad
tale.
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