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His and Lester's blastoff drums were still in the freight compartment, but the ionics and air-restorers had been similarly rendered unworkable. Their oxygen and water flasks were gone. Only their bubbs were intact, but there was nothing with which to inflate them. When Frank examined the sun-powered tractor, he found that tiny platinum plates had been taken from the thermocouple units.
Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer. "Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our host, first?" Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said. "The air-restorers are new." But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take it. He threw down the unlighted fag.
Out here, unlike on the Moon at night, the air-restorers could also take direct solar energy through their windows. They needed current only for their pumps. But the green chlorophane, key to the freshening and re-oxygenation of air, was getting slightly pale. The moisture-reclaimers were by luck not as bad as some of the other vital parts. Ramos touched his needled side.
After a long deceleration they were afraid to draw any more power for propulsion from their weakened batteries. They needed the remaining current for the moisture-reclaimers and the pumps of the air-restorers a relatively much lighter but vital drain. The sunlight was weak way out here. Worse, the solar thermocouples to power the ionics were almost shot.
The point is not to lose time. New restrictions may turn up, and give us trouble, if we do. We'll have to ride our luck for a break." "Hell you know the lists are ready, Art," Frank Nelsen pointed out. "A bubb for everybody or the stuff to make it. Full-scale ionic drives, air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers, likewise. Some of the navigation instruments we'll almost have to buy.
Frank Nelsen's tongue tasted of brassy doubt. He didn't know where he'd be, or what luck, good or bad, he might run into, within the next hour. The Kuzaks were palavering with the occupants of two heavily-loaded trader rockets. "Sure we'll buy if the price is right," Art was saying. "Flasks of water and oxygen, medicines, rolls of stellene. Spare parts for Archies, ionics, air-restorers.
The sweetish, starchy liquid that they could suck through a tube from the air-restorers it was a by-product of the photosynthetic process might even have sustained them for a considerable interval. But the steady weakening of their nuclear batteries was another matter. The pumps of their air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers were dependent on current.
When they switched in the new current, the pumps of their equipment worked better at once. The internal lights of their air-restorers could be used again, augmenting the action of the pale sunshine on the photosynthetic processes of the chlorophane. The air they breathed improved immediately. They tested the power on the shaky ionics, and got a good thrust reaction.
But he worked harder building air-restorers than most of the Bunch had ever worked before. "We're hardcore, now we'll last," he would growl. "Final, long lap March, April and May with no more interruptions. In June, when our courses at Tech are finished, we'll be ready to roll..." That was about how it turned out.
The air-restorers were going to be the toughest and most expensive to make. They were the really vital things to a spaceman. Every detail had to be carefully fitted and assembled. The chlorophane contained costly catalytic agents. A winter of hard work was ahead, but they figured on a stretch of clear sailing, now.
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