“Glass cloth? To make an airtight seal?” I objected.
“The cloth doesn’t seal; it’s for strength. You got ten layers of cloth, with a silicone grease spread between the layers. It gradually goes bad, from the outside in, but it’ll hold five years or more before you have to put on another coat.”
I asked Konski how he liked his job, thinking I might get some story. He shrugged. “It’s all right. Nothing to it. Only one atmosphere of pressure. Now you take when I was working under the Hudson-”
“And getting paid a tenth of what you get here,” put in Knowles.
“Mr. Knowles, you grieve me,” Konski protested. “It ain’t the money; it’s the art of the matter. Take Venus. They pay as well on Venus and a man has to be on his toes. The muck is so loose you have to freeze it. It takes real caisson men to work there. Half of these punks here are just miners; a case of the bends would scare ’em silly.”
“Tell him why you left Venus, Fatso.”
Konski expressed dignity. “Shall we examine the movable shield, gentlemen?” he asked.
We puttered around a while longer and I was ready to go back. There wasn’t much to see, and the more I saw of the place the less I liked it. Konski was undogging the door of the airlock leading back when something happened.
I was down on my hands and knees and the place was pitch dark. Maybe I screamed-I don’t know. There was a ringing in my ears. I tried to get up and then stayed where I was. It was the darkest dark I ever saw, complete blackness. I thought I was blind.
A torchlight beam cut through it, picked me out, and then moved on. “What was it?” I shouted. “What happened? Was it a quake?”
“Stop yelling,” Konski’s voice answered me casually. “That was no quake, it was some sort of explosion. Mr. Knowles-you all right?”
“I guess so.” He gasped for breath. “What happened?”
“Dunno. Let’s look around a bit.” Konski stood up and poked his beam around the tunnel, whistling softly. His light was the sort that has to be pumped; it flickered.
“Looks tight, but I hear-Oh, oh! Sister!” His beam was focused on a part of the flexible joint, near the floor.
The “tag-along” balloons were gathering at this spot. Three were already there; others were drifting in slowly. As we watched, one of them burst and collapsed in a sticky mass that marked the leak.
The hole sucked up the burst balloon and began to hiss. Another rolled onto the spot, joggled about a bit, then it, too, burst. It took a little longer this time for the leak to absorb and swallow the gummy mass.
Konski passed me the light. “Keep pumping it, kid.” He shrugged his right arm out of the suit and placed his bare hand over the spot where, at that moment, a third bladder burst.
“How about it, Fats?” Mr. Knowles demanded.
“Couldn’t say. Feels like a hole as big as my thumb. Sucks like the devil.”
“How could you get a hole like that?”
“Search me. Poked through from the outside, maybe.”
“You got the leak checked?”
“I think so. Go back and check the gage. Jack, give him the light.”
Knowles trotted back to the airlock. Presently he sang out, “Pressure steady!”
“Can you read the vernier?” Konski called to him.
“Sure. Steady by the vernier.”
“How much we lose?”
“Not more than a pound or two. What was the pressure before?”
“Earth-normal.”
“Lost a pound four tenths, then.”
“Not bad. Keep on going, Mr. Knowles. There’s a tool kit just beyond the lock in the next section. Bring me back a number three patch, or bigger.”
“Right.” We heard the door open and clang shut, and we were again in total darkness. I must have made some sound for Konski told me to keep my chin up.
Presently we heard the door, and the blessed light shone out again. “Got it?” said Konski.
“No, Fatso. No . . .” Knowles’ voice was shaking. “There’s no air on the other side. The other door wouldn’t open.”