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„Is any part of this thing likely to be softer?” he asked the interested Mesklinite as he looked up from this task. „I’m going to need power tools to get enough out of this body to satisfy the boys on Toorey.”
„Some parts inside the mouth might be a little more tractable,” Barle
„Not that I know of — thanks a lot; if the big boys don’t like it they can come down and do their own carving,” returned Lackland. „Go right ahead. Let’s follow your other suggestion, too, and get something from the mouth; I’m not really sure I’m through skin here.” He waddled painfully around the head of the stranded behemoth to a point where gravity-distorted lips had exposed teeth, gums, and what was presumably a tongue. „Just get bits small enough to go in these bottles without crowding.” The Earthman tentatively tried the scalpel once more, finding the tongue somewhat less obdurate than the earlier sample, while Barle
Lackland straightened up, stowing the last of the containers as he did so, and cast a covetous glance at the pillarlike teeth. „I suppose it would take blasting gelatine to get one of those out,” he remarked rather sadly.
„What is that?” asked Barle
„An explosive — a substance that changes into gas very suddenly, producing loud noise and shock. We use such material for digging, removing undesirable buildings or pieces of landscape, and sometimes in fighting.”
„Was that sound an explosive?” Barle
For an instant Lackland made no answer. A boom of very respectable intensity, heard on a planet whose natives are ignorant of explosives and where no other member of the human race is present, can be rather disconcerting, especially when it picks such an incredibly apt time to happen; and to lay that Lackland was startled would be putting it mildly. He could not judge accurately the distance or size of the explosion, having heard it through Barle
„It sounded very much like one,” he answered the Mesklin-ite’s question somewhat belatedly, even as he started to waddle back around the head of the dead sea monster to where he had left the tank. He rather dreaded what he would find. Barle
For an instant, as the tank came in sight, Lackland felt an overwhelming relief; but this changed to an equally profound shock as he reached the door of the vehicle.
What remained of the floor consisted of upcurled scraps
of thin metal, some still attached at the bases of the walls and others tangled among the controls and other interior fittings. The driving machinery, which had been under the floor, was almost completely exposed, and a single glance was enough to tell the dismayed Earthman that it was hopelessly wrecked. Barle
„I take it you were, carrying some explosive in your tank,” he remarked. „Why did you not use it to get the material you wanted from this animal? And what made it act while it was still in the tank?”
„You have a genius for asking difficult questions,” Lackland replied. „The answer to your first one is that I was not carrying any; and to the second, your guess is as good as mine at this point.”
„But it must have been something you were carrying,” Barle
„Admitting your logic, there was nothing under that floor that I can imagine blowing up,” replied the man. „Electric motors and their accumulators just aren’t explosive. A close examination will undoubtedly show traces of whatever it was if it was in any sort of container, since practically none of the fragments seem to have gone outside the tank — but I have a rather worse problem to solve first, Barl.”
„What is that?”
„I am eighteen miles from food supplies, other than what is carried in my armor. The tank is ruined; and if there was ever an Earthman born who could walk eighteen miles in eight-atmosphere heated armor under three gravities, I’m certainly not the one. My air will last indefinitely with these algae gills and enough sunlight, but I’d starve to death before I made the station.”
„Can’t you call your friends on the faster moon, and have them send a rocket to carry you back?”
„I could; probably they already know, if anyone is in the radio room to hear this conversation. The trouble is if I have to get that sort of help Doc Rosten will certainly make me go back to Toorey for the winter; I had trouble enough as it was persuading him to let me stay. He’ll have to hear about the tank, but I want to tell him from the station — after getting back there without his help. There just isn’t energy around here to get me back, though; and even if I could get more food into the containers in this armor without letting your air in, you couldn’t get into the station to get the food.” „Let’s call my crew, anyway,” Barle
„We are coming, Captain.” Dondragmer’s voice came from the radio, startling Lackland, who had forgotten his arrangement to let each radio hear the others, and startling the commander himself, who had not realized that his mate had learned so much English. „We will be with you in a few days at most; we took the same general direction as the Flyer’s machine when we started.” He gave this information in his native language; Barle
„I can see that you won’t be hungry for quite a while,” the man replied, glancing somewhat ruefully at the mountain of meat beside them, „but what was this other idea of yours? Will it help with my problem?”
„A little, I think.” The Mesklinite would have smiled had his mouth been sufficiently flexible. „Will you please step on me?”
For several seconds Lackland stood rigid with astonishment at the request; after all, Barle
„All right, Barl. For a moment I’d forgotten the circumstances.” The Mesklinite had crawled over to his feet during the pause; and without further hesitation Lackland took the requested step. There proved to be only one difficulty.
Lackland had a mass of about one hundred sixty pounds. His armor, an engineering miracle in its own way, was about as much more. On Mesklin’s equator, then, man and armor weighed approximately nine hundred fifty pounds — he could not have moved a step without an ingenious servo device in the legs — and this weight was only about a quarter greater than that of Barle
The Mesklinite was stumped; this time it was Lackland who thought of a solution. Some of the side plates on the fewer part of the tank had been sprung by the blast inside; and under Lackland’s direction Barle