With his right arm, he closed the belly opening through which he had entered. Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, he thought. The inch and a half thickness of Cordolite felt cold and clammy even through the liner. He turned up the heat control by means of the switch at the end of the left sleeve.
The swirl of air began to fill the suit as he began inflation. The fabric was a close fit in most areas except for the helmet and sleeve terminals where the controls and digital manipulators were located.
The warmth made him more comfortable, but didn't dispel the conviction that he'd rather manufacture the suits than wear them. As the air pressure rose to normal, the suit became free in the Iron Maiden and he stepped out, undogging the right sleeve. He went to the controls of the air lock and started the pumps that would evacuate the lock and reduce the temperature to that inside the icebox. While he waited, he checked the row of tiny meters just inside the lower range of vision at chin level. Temperature, pressure, tank pressure, voltage of the power pack — they were normal. Except for the tank: it wasn't up to full capacity. He wondered if he should fill it. But there was no need. He wouldn't be in the lock more than an hour at the most.
The door automatically swung open as the pumps completed the evacuation. He stepped through into the test room and closed the door behind him.
The score or more of hanging, bulging suits in their racks across the room seemed like waiting corpses for some reason. The utter silence, the knowledge of the absolute cold and vacuum beyond the thickness of the suit always depressed him. He knew he'd never have made a spaceman. They got used to it, they said. But this was the nearest he'd ever get to the thrill of space adventure, he was certain.
He reached up above his head to check the door clamp again and scowled at the peephole transmitter and mike just below it. These were for the operators setting up the chamber for a test, but they were automatically on whenever the door was closed. Safety precaution some bright lad had devised, Kimberly thought. Some safety for a guy in a spacesuit in there with no air, though.
Yet it gave him an absurd, comforting sense of connection with the world of the living, even though no one but the watchman would be out there somewhere in the building.
He walked over to the row of suit carcasses. They looked all right. Their telemeters showed pressure and temperature being maintained at normal in all of them.
Kimberly felt a surge of growing irritation. There was nothing wrong with these suits. It must have been something to do with the Queen or conditions on the Moon that broke down those others. It made no sense at all. And he'd never get to the cabin by dark, now.
But though there was nothing wrong, how could he take the week end off until he had proven positively that it was so? In a burst of anger he hauled back and punched the nearest carcass in the belly. It jolted back and sent the whole rackful reeling in their hangers like, like — dead men swinging in the wind, Kimberly thought morosely.
Then he heard it.
A slow, shrill screaming in his ears. Trilling up and down the scale, it escaped momentarily beyond the range of audibility, then slid down in wild, despairing crescendo.
The hair prickled on the back of his neck. He turned the heater up a notch and whirled about, as if to find the source of the wailing behind him.
There was nothing, of course. And Johnson's words came back to him. "Your suits are haunted."
Of all the incredible nonsense! But where did the sound come from?
He realized now that it had been there all the time just on the verge of perceptibility. But his senses had not recorded it until the cold, depressing surroundings began to weigh on him.
Psychological.
He listened hard, straining his ears with all the voluntary effort he could muster. Even his heartbeat began to sound loud inside the suit.
It was there. Actual, physical sound waves were producing that sensation. It was no mere delusion of the senses. He was certain of that.
He looked at the row of carcasses that had almost stopped swaying. Fiercely, he jabbed out again.
A wild scream pierced his ears. Simultaneously, his arm snapped back as if it had been hit with a club. In half numbing pain, he regarded his arm. It projected straight out at his side — immovable.
For a moment he looked at the swinging carcasses. It was almost as if they had struck back.
But he knew what it was. The elbow and shoulder joints had broken down completely.
Springs, he thought, that could withstand five million flexings in the test machines in the icebox, yet they failed with a few flexings when in a suit.
He made a tentative gesture to bend the stiffened arm. It only made his bruised muscles ache worse. The sleeve would not move — as he well knew.
He tried the left arm, flexing it slowly. It seemed all right. He dug his manipulators into the thick plastic of the right sleeve to feel of the springs in the joints. There simply weren't any. He rubbed the fabric back and forth between the manipulators. Lacking a sense of touch, he couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if there were fine metallic shards in the thin sheaths where the springs should have been. They had shattered to bits.
Cold?
They had been tested for months in the icebox. Stationary, flexed at a hundred cycles per minute, heated, cooled again — everything the test engineers could think of had been done to those springs to break them down. And they held.
Until now.
He moved towards the swaying carcasses.
"How are you boys doing? Let's feel that muscle." He flexed the arms of the nearest suit with his left hand. The legs. The joints seemed satisfactory. He went on down the line. As he reached for the next to the last one, his left arm snapped back.
He stood there like some fantastic scarecrow, arms outstretched — swearing very softly to himself.
With impotent rage, he tried to bring his arms together. It was like trying to squeeze a block of cement. That was the physical factor behind his rage. But the psychological was greater. The inability to even guess at what was going on right under his nose. It was almost as if the springs were allergic to man. They withstood every physical torture that engineering could devise. But mounted in a suit and worn by a man, they failed.
Kimberly gave a shrug of disgust. He'd be suspecting somebody of hexing the suits next if he kept up that line of reasoning. There was a perfectly logical, physical explanation for the failure of the springs. It was right under his nose. It must be fatigue that kept him from seeing it, he thought. At any rate, there was nothing more to be done, now. He couldn't accomplish anything with his arms sticking out like boards.
He might as well get out of the suit and have some dinner. Then he'd call the engineers down for an all-night session if necessary. The week end vacation was off. He'd have to let Bernice know he hadn't left. He started for the door.
And nearly fell on his face.
He hadn't even heard it or felt it. But while he'd stood there the entire set of springs in the left leg of the suit had collapsed and left him stifflegged.
Sweat suddenly formed a moist film on his face. If the right leg should also go, he'd be in one sweet jam!
Cautiously, he tested it. He raised one foot slowly and carefully, making sure to maintain his balance on the leg that couldn't be shifted if he needed its sudden counteraction.