“Okay.”
None too soon-the bottle which had been almost full had dropped by a third, more like half. She couldn’t make it to Tombaugh Station on that -simple arithmetic. So I crossed my fingers and got to work. “Partner, will you untie this cat’s cradle?”
While Peewee fumbled at knots, I started to take a drink-then stopped, ashamed of myself. Peewee must be chewing her tongue to work up saliva by now-and I hadn’t been able to think of any way to get water to her. The tank was inside my helmet and there was no way to reach it without making me-and Mother Thing-dead in the process.
If I ever lived to be an engineer I’d correct that!
I decided that it was idiotic not to drink because she couldn’t; the lives of all of us might depend on my staying in the best condition I could manage. So I drank and ate three malted milk tablets and a salt tablet, then had another drink. It helped a lot but I hoped Peewee hadn’t noticed. She was busy unwinding clothesline-anyhow it was hard to see into a helmet.
I took Peewee’s empty bottle off her back, making darn sure to close her outside stop valve first-there’s supposed to be a one-way valve where an air hose enters a helmet but I no longer trusted her suit; it might have more cost-saving shortcomings. I laid the empty on the ground by a full one, looked at it, straightened up and touched helmets. “Peewee, disconnect the bottle on the left side of my back.”
“Why, Kip?”
“Who’s doing this job?” I had a reason but was afraid she might argue. My lefthand bottle held pure oxygen; the others were oxy-helium. It was full, except for a few minutes of fiddling last night in Centerville. Since I couldn’t possibly give her bottle a full charge, the next best thing was to give her a half-charge of straight oxygen.
She shut up and removed it.
I set about trying to transfer pressure between bottles whose connections didn’t match. There was no way to do it properly, short of tools a quarter of a million miles away-or over in Tombaugh Station which was just as bad. But I did have adhesive tape.
Oscar’s manual called for two first-aid kits. I didn’t know what was supposed to be in them; the manual had simply given USAF stock numbers. I hadn’t been able to guess what would be useful in an outside kit-a hypodermic needle, maybe, sharp enough to stab through and give a man morphine when he needed it terribly. But since I didn’t know, I had stocked inside and outside with bandage, dressings, and a spool of surgical tape.
I was betting on the tape.
I butted the mismatched hose connections together, tore off a scrap of bandage and wrapped it around the junction-I didn’t want sticky stuff on the joint; it could foul the operation on a suit. Then I taped the junction, wrapping tightly, working very painstakingly and taping three inches on each side as well as around the joint-if tape could restrain that pressure a few moments, there would still be one deuce of a force trying to drag that joint apart. I didn’t want it to pull apart at the first jolt. I used the entire roll.
I motioned Peewee to touch helmets. “I’m about to open the full bottle. The valve on the empty is already open. When you see me start to close the valve on the full one, you close the other one-fast! Got it?”
“Close the valve when you do, quickly. Roger.”
“Stand by. Get your hand on the valve.” I grabbed that lump of bandaged joint in one fist, squeezed as hard as I could, and put my other hand on the valve. If that joint let go, maybe my hand would go with it- but if the stunt failed, little Peewee didn’t have long to live. So I really gripped.
Watching both gauges, I barely cracked the valve. The hose quivered; the needle gauge that read “empty” twitched. I opened the valve wide.
One needle swung left, the other right. Quickly they approached half-charge. “Now!” I yelled uselessly and started closing the valve.