closed, but his layman’s knowledge of engineering failed him
entirely there; he could come up with nothing better than
a vision of the pilot plugging that hole with a wad of well-
chewed bubble gum.
He sniffed the damp, cold, still air. Nothing. If the pilot
had breathed anything alien to Earth-normal air, it had
already dissipated without trace in the organ pipe of the
tunnel. He flashed bis light inside the cabin.
The instruments were smashed beyond hope, except for
a few at the sides of the capsule. “The pilot had smashed them
or rather, his environment had.
Before him in the light of the torch was a heavy, transpar-
ent tank of iridescent greenish-brown fluid, with a small figure
floating inside it. It had been the tank, which had broken
free of its moorings, which had smashed up the rest of the
compartment. The pilot was completely enclosed in what
looked like an ordinary G-suit, inside the oil; flexible hoses
connected to bottles on the ceiling fed him his atmosphere,
whatever it was. The hoses hadn’t broken, but something
inside the G-suit had; a line of tiny bubbles was rising from
somewhere near the pilot’s neck.
He pressed the EEG electrode net against the tank and
looked into the Walter goggles. The sheep with the kitten’s
faces were still there, somewhat changed in position; but
almost all of the color had washed out of the scene.
McDonough grunted involuntarily. There was now an at-
mosphere about the picture which hit him like a blow, a
feeling of intense oppression, of intense distress . . .