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For answer, O'Brine strode to the operating-room communicator. "Get it," he called. "The deputy commander will prepare landing boat one and issue new space suits and helmets for all Planeteers with damaged equipment. Put in two rolls of nuclite. Sergeant Major Koa will see that all Planeteers have an opportunity to clean up and eat. They will return to the asteroid in one hour."
Rip ordered a survey and found the best place on the dark side to make a new base. The Planeteers cut out a cave with the torch, lined it with nuclite, and moved in the supplies. It would be their base to the end of the trip. The sun was very hot now. On the sunny side of the asteroid the temperature had soared far past the boiling point of water.
Their single five KT bomb contained at least enough plutonium for two critical masses, if brought together inside a good neutron reflector. Each mass should give about a two kiloton explosion. And they did have a good neutron reflector nuclite. There wasn't anything better. "What have we got for a neutron source?" he asked aloud. He was really asking himself, but he got a quick answer from Koa.
He sliced off the inner side where it tapered to a cone, then, working only by eye estimate, cut out a hole in which the wedge of fission material would fit. He wasn’t off by a thirty-second of an inch. Skillful application of the torch melted the thorium around the wedge and sealed it tightly. Koa was ready with a sheet of nuclite.
The Mercurian Planeteer base was in the twilight zone, but the Planeteers always worked on the sun side, wearing special alloy suits to mine the precious nuclite that only the hot planet provided. At some time during its first years, Mercury had been so close to the sun that its temperature was driven high enough to permit a subatomic thermonuclear reaction.
For answer, O’Brine strode to the operating room communicator. "Get it," he called. "The deputy commander will prepare landing boat one and issue new space suits and helmets for all Planeteers with damaged equipment. Put in two rolls of nuclite. Sergeant-major Koa will see that all Planeteers have an opportunity to clean up and eat immediately.
The protective shield of nuclite had been rolled back, and they could see into space through the clear-vision port. Rip and MacFife hurried to the side where they were connected to the Connie. Rip looked down along the length of the ship. The valve connection was in the middle of each ship, at the point of greatest diameter. From that point each ship grew more slender.
He made himself as comfortable as possible, and encouraged Koa to talk about his service in the Special Order Squadrons. Koa had plenty to tell, and he talked interestingly. Rip learned that the big Hawaiian had been to every planet in the system, had fought the Venusians on the central desert, and had mined nuclite with SOS One on Mercury.
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