“Not as things stand now. Art’s got his nose out of joint. You can’t blame him — he was disappointed that he didn’t get to take pilot training, too.”
“But that wasn’t my fault.”
“No, but you’ve got to fix it. You’ve got to behave so that, if the time comes, they’ll want to take your orders. This trip is no picnic. There will be times when our lives may depend on instant obedience. I put it to you bluntly, Morrie — if I had had a choice I would have picked Ross for my second-in-command — he’s less flighty than you are. But you’re it, and you’ve got to live up to it. Otherwise we don’t take off.”
“Oh, we’ve got to take off! We can’t give up now!”
“We’ll make it. The trouble is, Morrie,” he went on, “American boys are brought up loose and easy. That’s fine. I like it that way. But there comes a time when loose and easy isn’t enough, when you have to be willing to obey, and do it wholeheartedly and without argument. See what I’m driving at?”
“You mean you want me to get on back to the shop and help Art.”
“Correct.” He swung the boy around and faced him toward the door, slapped him on the back and said, “Now git!”
Morrie “got.” He paused at the door and flung back over his shoulder,
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. I can straighten out and fly right.”
“Roger!” Cargraves decided to have a talk with Art later.
Chapter 6: DANGER IN THE DESERT
THE SPACE SUITS WERE delivered the next day, causing another break in the work, to Cargraves’ annoyance. However, the boys were so excited over this evidence that they were actually preparing to walk on the face of the moon that he decided to let them get used to the suits.
The suits were modified pressurized stratosphere suits, as developed for the air forces. They looked like diving suits, but were less clumsy. The helmets were “goldfish bowls” of Plexiglas, laminated with soft polyvinyl-butyral plastic to make them nearly shatter-proof. There were no heating arrangements. Contrary to popular belief, vacuum of outer space has no temperature; it is neither hot nor cold. Man standing on the airless moon would gain or lose heat only by radiation, or by direct contact with the surface of the moon. As the moon was believed to vary from extreme sub-zero to temperatures hotter than boiling water, Cargraves had ordered thick soles of asbestos for the shoes of the suits and similar pads for the seats of the pants of each suit, so that they could sit down occasionally without burning or freezing. Over-gloves of the same material completed the insulation against contact. The suits were so well insulated, as well as airtight, that body heat more than replaced losses through radiation. Cargraves would have preferred thermostatic control, but such refinements could be left to the pioneers and colonists who would follow after. Each suit had a connection for an oxygen bottle much larger and heavier than the jump bottle of an aviator, a bottle much too heavy to carry on earth but not too heavy for the surface of the moon, where weight is only one-sixth that found on earth.
The early stratosphere suits tended to starfish and become rigid, which made the simplest movements an effort. In trying on his own suit, Cargraves was pleased to find that these suits were easy to move around in, even when he had Ross blow him up until the suit was carrying a pressure of three atmospheres, or about forty-five pounds to the square inch. The constant-volume feature, alleged for the de-Camp joints, appeared to be a reality.
Cargraves let them experiment, while seeing to it that as many field tests as possible were made to supplement the manufacturer’s laboratory tests. Then the suits were turned over to Art for installation of walky-talky equipment.
The following day the doctor turned all the boys to work on the conversion of the drive mechanism. He was expecting delivery of the atomic fission element thorium; the anti-radiation shield had to be ready. This shield was constructed of lead, steel, and organic plastic, in an arrangement which his calculations indicated would be most effective in screening the alpha, beta, and gamma radiations and the slippery neutrons, from the forward part of the rocket.