“Marty,” he said hoarsely. “Let’s see if we can’t cut into
that tank from the bottom somehow.” He backed down
into the tunnel.
“Why? If he’s got internal injuries”
“The suit’s been breached. It’s filling with that oil from
the bottom. If we don’t drain the tank, he’ll drown first.”
“All right. Still think he’s a man-from-Mars, Mac?”
“I don’t know. It’s too small to be a man, you can see
that. And the memories aren’t like human memories. That’s
all I know. Can we drill the tank some place?”
“Don’t need to,” Persons’ echo-distorted voice said from
inside the air lock. The reflections of his flashlight shifted
in the opening like ghosts. “I just found a drain pet cock.
Roll up your trouser cuffs, gents.”
But the oil didn’t drain out of the ship. Evidently it went
into storage somewhere inside the hull, to be pumped back
into the pilot’s cocoon when it was needed again.
It took a long time. The silence came flooding back into
the tunnel.
“That oil-suspension trick is neat,” Martinson whispered
edgily. “Cushions him like a fish. He’s got inertia still, but
no masslike a man in free fall.”
McDonough fidgeted, but said nothing. He was trying to
imagine what the multicolored vision of the pilot could mean.
Something about it was nagging at him. It was wrong. Why
would a still-conscious and gravely injured pilot be solely
preoccupied with remembering the fields of home? Why
wasn’t he trying to save himself insteadas ingeniously as
he had tried to save the ship? He still had electrical power,
and in that litter of smashed apparatus which he alone could