"It already has."
"But look at this!" Tex held up a can marked: Old Plantation Hotcake Flour. "This won't be spoiled-hotcakes for breakfast, troops. I can hardly wait."
"What good are flapjacks without syrup?"
"All the comforts of home-half a dozen cans of it." He produced one marked: Genuine Vermont Maple Syrup, unadulterated.
Tex wanted to take some back with them. Oscar vetoed it, on both practical and diplomatic grounds. Tex suggested that they remain in the ship, not go back. "Presently, Tex,; presently," Oscar agreed. "You forgot about Lieutenant Thur-! low." -
"So I did. Close my big mouth."
"Speaking of Mr. Thurlow," put in Matt, "you've given me an idea. He won't touch much of that native hash, even when he seems to come pretty far out of it. How about that sugar syrup? I could feed it to him from a drinking bladder."
"It can't hurt him and it might help," decided Oscar. "We'll take half the syrup back with us." Tex picked the cans up, Matt tucked a can opener in his pouch, and they went outside.
Matt was pleased to find Th'wing on watch in Thurlow's room when they got back; she would be easier to deal with than the other nurses. He explained to her what he had in mind, in polite circumlocutions. She accepted a can Matt had opened and tasted, beforehand, and turned her back apologetically while she tasted it.
She spat it out. "Art thou sure that this will not harm thy ailing mother?"
Matt understood her hesitation, since Venerian diet runs to starch and protein, not to sugar. -He assured her that Thurlow would be helped thereby. They transferred the contents to a bladder.
The cadets talked over what they should do about the Astarte after dinner that night. Matt insisted that she could be made to fly; Tex remained of the opinion that they would be silly to attempt it. "She might get high enough to crash-no higher."
Oscar listened, then said, "Matt, did you check the tanks?" Matt admitted that he had. "Then you know there isn't any fuel."
"Then why are you arguing?" Tex interrupted. "The matter is settled."
"No, it's not, announced Oscar. "Well try to fly her."
"HuhF
"She can't fly and well try anyhow," Oscar went on.
"But why?"
"Okay-here's why. If we just sit here long enough, the Patrol will come along and find us, won't they?"
"Probably," agreed Matt.
"Absolute certainty. That's the way the Patrol works. They won't let us down. Look at the search for the Pathfinder -four ships, month after month. If their mishap hadn't killed them, the Patrol would have brought them back alive. We're still alive and we are somewhere near our original destination. They'll find us-the delay simply means they aren't sure we are lost yet; we haven't been out of touch so very long. Anyhow, we knew there wasn't a ship ready at either North Pole or South Pole to attempt an equatorial search, or we wouldn't have gotten the mission in the first place, so it may take a while before they can come for us. But they'll come."
"Then why not wait?" insisted Tex.
"Two reasons. The first is the boss-we've got to get him to a proper hospital before he just fades away and dies."
"And kill him in the take off."
"Maybe. That wouldn't faze him, is my guess. The second reason is-we are the Patrol."
"Huh? Come again."
"It's agreed that the Patrol wouldn't give up looking for us. Okay, if that's the sort of an outfit the Patrol is and we are part of the Patrol, then when they find us, they'll find us doing our level best to pull out unassisted, not sitting on our fat fannies waiting for a lift."
"I get you," said Tex. "I was afraid your busy little brain would figure that out, given time. Very well-mark me down as a reluctant hero. I think I'll turn in; this hero business is going to be sweaty and wearing."
It was indeed sweaty. The Venerians continued to be helpful but the actual work of attempting to outfit a ship for space had to be done entirely by the humans. With the permission of the city mother Oscar, transferred their headquarters to the Astarte. Thurlow was not moved, but arrangements were made for one cadet to be ferried each day back to the city, to report on Thurlow and to bring food back. There were few supplies left in the Astarte which were still edible.
However the pancake mix turned out to be usable. Tex had gadgeted together an ail burner of sorts-they had no electrical power as yet-and had charged the contraption with a fish oil obtained from the natives. Over this he baked his hotcakes. They were noticeably inferior to any that any of the three had ever tasted, for the flour had aged and changed flavor. They showed little tendency to rise.
But they were hotcakes and they were drowned in maple syrup. It was a ceremony, at the beginning of each working day, held on the sly behind a locked door, lest one of their puritanical friends be offended.
They embarked on a systematic campaign to vandalize each of the other ships for anything at all that might prove useful in outfitting the Astarte. In this, too, they were dependent on the natives; Matt or Tex could pick out what was wanted, but it took the little folk to move anything several miles through swamp and water and unmarked jungle.
They talked of the flight as if they really expected to make it. "You give me radar," Matt told Oscar, "any sort of approach radar, so that I've got a chance to land, and I'll set her down somewhere at South Pole. You can forget about the astrogational junk; it'll be dead reckoning."
They had settled on New Auckland, South Pole, as their nominal destination. North Pole would have been equally reasonable, but Oscar was a southern colonial, which decided it.
Oscar had promised the radar, not knowing quite how he could manage it. The Gary was the only hope; her communications room had been wrecked but Oscar had hopes of salvaging her belly radar. He set about doing it, while swearing at the impossibility of doing delicate work with one arm in a sling.
Little from the jeep was worth salvaging and none of it was entirely intact. Oscar had tried at first to use the radar equipment of the Astarte, but had given up-a century of difference in technology baffled him. Not only were the electronic circuits of the Astarte vastly more complicated and equally less efficient than the gear he had been brought up. with but the nomenclature was different-the markings, for example, on a simple resistor were Greek to him.
As for radio circuits the only sending installation actually fit to operate was a suit walky-talky from the Gary.
Nevertheless there came a morning when they had done what they could do. Tex was dealing out hotcakes. "It looks to me," he said, "as if we were ready to go, if we had some 'go' juice."
"How do you figure that," asked Matt. "The control board isn't even hooked to the jet."
"What of it? I'm going to have to throttle by hand anyhow. I'm going to take that big piece of tubing we pulled out of the Gary and string it from you back to me, at the jet throttle. You can shout down it and if I like it I'll do it."
"And if you don't like it?"
"Then I'll do something else. Easy on that syrup, Oz; it's the very last."
Oscar stopped himself, syrup can in midair. "Oh, I'm sorry, Tex. Here-let me slop some from my plate onto yours."
"Don't bother. It was just a reflex remark. To tell the truth, I'm sick of hotcakes. We've had them every day now for more than two weeks, with nothing to break the monotony but hash a la native." ,
"I'm sick of them, too, but it didn't seem polite to say so, with you doing the cooking." Oscar pushed back his plate. "I don't mind the syrup running out"
"But it hasn’t-" Matt stopped.
"Something bite you, Matt?"
"No, I-nothing." He continued to look thoughtful.
"Close your mouth, then. Say, Oz, if we had some 'go' juice for the Tart, what would you pick?"
"Monatomic hydrogen."