To him, that sphere of liquid was death to his plan; it would not burn itself, it probably would not let anything else burn either. If it touched and soaked his fuse, he would have to wait until it evaporated; and there might not be time for that. He released the striker with a curse, and swung his open hand at the drop, trying to drive it to one side. He succeeded only partly. It spattered on his hand, breaking up into scores of smaller drops, some of which moved obediently away, while others just drifted, and still others vanished in vapor. None drifted far; and the gentle current had them in control almost at once, and began to bear many of them back toward the hole — and Hart's fuse.
For just a moment the saboteur hung there in agonized indecision, and then his training reasserted itself. With another curse he snatched at the striker, made sure it was ready for action, and turned to the hole in the door. It was at this moment that Mayhew chose to take another look at his captive.
As it happened, the lens of his scanner was so located that Hart's body covered the hole in the door; and since the spy's back was toward him, the watcher could not tell precisely what he was doing. The air of purposefulness about the captive was so outstanding and so impressive, however, that Mayhew was reaching for a microphone to order a direct check on the cell when Hart spun the striker wheel.
Mayhew could not, of course, see just what the man had done, but the consequences were plain enough. The saboteur's body was flung away from the door and toward the scanner lens like a rag doll kicked by a mule. An orange blossom of flame outlined him for an instant; and in practically the same instant the screen went blank as a heavy shock wave shattered its pickup lens.
Mayhew, accustomed as he was to weightless maneuvering, never in his life traveled so rapidly as he did then. Floyd and several other crewmen, who saw him on the way, tried to follow; but he outstripped them all, and when they reached the sight of Hart's prison Mayhew was hanging poised outside, staring at the door.
There was no need of removing the welded bar. The thin metal of the door had been split and curled outward fantastically; an opening quite large enough for any man's body yawned in it, though there was nothing more certain than the fact that Hart had not made use of this avenue of escape. His body was still in the cell, against the far wall; and even now the relatively strong currents from the hall ventilators did not move it. Floyd had a pretty good idea of what held it there, and did not care to look closely. He might be right.
Mayhew's voice broke the prolonged silence.
“He never did figure it out.”
“Just what let go, anyway?” asked Floyd.
“Well, the only combustible we know of in the cell was the lighter fluid. To blast like that, though, it must have been almost completely vaporized, and mixed with just the right amount of air — possible, I suppose, in a room like this. I don't understand why he let it all out, though.”
“He seems to have been using pieces of the lighter,” Floyd pointed out. “The loose fuel was probably just a by-product of his activities. He was even duller than I, though. It took me long enough to realize that a fire needs air to burn — and can't set up convection currents to keep itself supplied with oxygen, when there is no gravity.”
“More accurately, when there is no weight,” interjected Mayhew. “We are well within Earth's gravity field, but in free fall. Convection currents occur because the heated gas is lighter per unit volume than the rest, and rises. With no weight, and no 'up' such currents are impossible.”
“In any case, he must have decided we were fooling him with noncombustible liquids.”
Mayhew replied slowly: “People are born and brought up in a steady gravity field, and come to take all its manifestations for granted. It's extremely hard to foresee all the consequences which will arise when you dispense with it. I've been here for years, practically constantly, and still get caught sometimes when I'm tired or just waking up.”
“They should have sent a spaceman to do this fellow's job, I should think.”
“How would he have entered the station? A man is either a spy or a spaceman — to be both would mean he was too old for action at all, I should say. Both professions demand years of rigorous training, since habits rather than knowledge are required — habits like the one of al ways stopping within reach of a wall or other massive object.” There was a suspicion of the old chuckle in his voice as Mayhew spoke the final sentence, and it was followed by a roar of laughter from the other men. Floyd looked around, and blushed furiously.
He was, as he had suspected from the older man's humor, suspended helplessly in midair out of reach of every source of traction. Had there been anything solid around, he would probably have used it for concealment instead, anyway. He managed at last to join that laughter; but at its end he glanced once more into Hart's cell, and remarked, “If this is the worst danger that inexperience lands on my head, I don't think I'll complain. Bruce, I want to go with you on your next leave to Earth; I simply must see you in a gravity field. I bet you won't wait for the ladder when we step off the rocket — though I guess it would be more fun to see you drop a dictionary on your toe. As you implied, habits are hard to break.”
Halo
“You disappoint me,” the class superintendent said with some feeling. “I have a personal as well as a professional dislike of wastefully run farms, and you seem to have furnished a prime example.” He paused briefly, watching in silence as the spheroidal forcing beds drifted smoothly about their central radiator. “Of course, I would be much more sympathetic with you if your own ill-advised actions were not so largely responsible for this situation.” He checked his young listener's half-uttered pro-test. “Oh, I realize that youngsters have to learn, and experiment is the only source of knowledge; but why not use the results of other people's experiments? This sort of thing has happened before, I think you'll find.”
“I didn't know.” The answer was sullen despite the grudging respect. “How was I supposed to?”
“Did you get an education or not?” There was some heat in the query. “I can't imagine what the primary teachers do these days. Even though you are so young, I understood that you had some qualifications and even a bit of promise in agriculture. That's why I thought you could be trusted without supervision for a few years. Am I to assume that you became dissatisfied with the yield of this farm?”
“Of course. Why else study agriculture?”
“Until you can answer that for yourself, I won't try to. Tell me in detail what you did. Did you try to step up the output of the central radiator?”
“What do you think I am?” The younger being's indignation flared abruptly.
The other remained calm and exhibited faint traces of amusement, permitting the feeling to show in his answer rather more plainly than was strictly tactful.
“Don't boil your crust off. You might not be able to spare it next time you go in to harvest. People still do try the stunt I mentioned, you know.
Every now and then it works for someone after a fashion, so the rest feel it's still worth trying. If it wasn't that, just what did you do? You're missing a culture unit, if I remember this solar system correctly.”
The student took a moment to find just the right words. “One of the lots seemed to be practically ideal. When it first solidified, it was just far enough from the radiator and just large enough to retain a thin surface film of light elements; and it responded beautifully to culturing with water-base growths. On the colder ones, by the way, I had good luck with ammonia cultures.”