But he was counting on me to do it.
The atmosphere leaned on the windows. Not wanting to, I reached out to touch the quartz with my fingertips. I couldn't feel the pressure. But it was there, inexorable as the tide smashing a rock into sand grains. How long would the cabin hold it back?
If some broken part were holding us here, how could I have missed finding it? Perhaps it had left no break in the surface of either wing. But how?
That was the angle.
Two cigarettes later I got up to get the sample buckets. They were empty, the alien dirt safely stored away. I filled them with water and put them in the cooler, set the cooler for 40 Absolute, then turned off the lights and went to bed.
The morning was blacker than the inside of a smoker's lungs. What Venus really needs, I decided, philosophizing on my back, is to lose ninety-nine percent of her air. That would give her a bit more than half as much air as Earth, which would lower the greenhouse effect enough to make the temperature livable. Drop Venus' gravity to near zero for a few weeks and the work would do itself.
The whole damn universe is waiting for us to discover antigravity.
"Morning," said Eric.
"Thought of anything?"
"Yes." I rolled out of bed.
"Now don't bug me with questions. I'll explain everything as I go."
"No breakfast?"
"Not yet."
Piece by piece I put my suit on, just like one of King Arthur's gentlemen, and went for the buckets only after the gantlets were on. The ice, in the cold section, was in the chilly neighborhood of absolute zero.
"This is two buckets of ordinary ice," I said, holding them up.
"Now let me out."
"I should keep you here till you talk," Eric groused. But the doors opened and I went out onto the wing. I started talking while I unscrewed the number two right panel.
"Eric, think a moment about the tests they run on a manned ship before they'll let a man walk into the lifesystem. They test every part separately and in conjunction with other parts. Yet if something isn't working, either it's damaged or it wasn't tested right. Right?"
"Reasonable." He wasn't giving away anything.
"Well, nothing caused any damage. Not only is there no break in the ship's skin, but no coincidence could have made both rams go haywire at the same time. So something wasn't tested right."
I had the panel off. In the buckets the ice boiled gently where it touched the surfaces of the glass buckets. The blue ice cakes had cracked under their own internal pressure. I dumped one bucket into the maze of wiring and contacts and relays, and the ice shattered, giving me room to close the panel.
"So I thought of something last night, something that wasn't tested. Every part of the ship must have been in the heat-and pressure box, exposed to artificial Venus conditions, but the ship as a whole, a unit, couldn't have been. It's too big." I'd circled around to the left wing and was opening the number three panel in the trailing edge. My remaining ice was half water and half small chips; I sloshed these in and fastened the panel.
"What cut your circuits must have been the heat or the pressure or both. I can't help the pressure, but I'm cooling these relays with ice. Let me know which ram gets its sensation back first, and we'll know which inspection panel is the right one."
"Howie. Has it occurred to you what the cold water might do to those hot metals?"
"It could crack them. Then you'd lose all control over the ramjets, which is what's wrong right now."
"Uh. Your point, partner. But I still can't feel anything."
I went back to the airlock with my empty buckets swinging, wondering if they'd get hot enough to melt. They might have, but I wasn't out that long. I had my suit off and was refilling the buckets when Eric said, "I can feel the right ram."
"How extensive? Full control?"
"No. I can't feel the temperature. Oh, here it comes. We're all set, Howie."
My sigh of relief was sincere.
I put the buckets in the freezer again. We'd certainly want to take off with the relays cold. The water had been chilling for perhaps twenty minutes when Eric reported, "Sensation's going."
"What?"
"Sensation's going. No temperature, and I'm losing fuel feed control. It doesn't stay cold long enough."
"Ouch! Now what?"
"I hate to tell you. I'd almost rather let you figure it out for yourself."
I had.
"We go as high as we can on the blimp tank, then I go out on the wing with a bucket of ice in each hand"
We had to raise the blimp tank temperature to almost eight hundred degrees to get pressure, but from then on we went up in good shape. To sixteen miles. It took three hours.
"That's as high as we go," said Eric.
"You ready?"
I went to get the ice. Eric could see me, he didn't need an answer. He opened the airlock for me.
Fear I might have felt, or panic, or determination or self- sacrifice but there was nothing. I went out feeling like a used zombie.
My magnets were on full. It felt like I was walking through shallow tar. The air was thick, though not as heavy as it had been down there. I followed my headlamp to the number two panel, opened it, poured ice in, and threw the bucket high and far. The ice was in one cake. I couldn't close the panel. I left it open and hurried around to the other wing. The second bucket was filled with exploded chips; I sloshed them in and locked the number two left panel and came back with both hands free. It still looked like limbo in all directions, except where the headlamp cut a tunnel through the darkness, and my feet were getting hot. I closed the right panel on boiling water and sidled back along the hull into the airlock.
"Come in and strap down," said Eric.
"Hurry!"
"Gotta get my suit off." My hands had started to shake from reaction. I couldn't work the clamps.
"No you don't. If we start right now we may get home. Leave the suit on and come in."
I did. As I pulled my webbing shut, the rams roared. The ship shuddered a little, then pushed forward as we dropped from under the blimp tank. Pressure mounted as the rams reached operating speed. Eric was giving it all he had. It would have been uncomfortable even without the metal suit around me. With the suit on it was torture. My couch was afire from the suit, but I couldn't get breath to say so. We were going almost straight up.
We had gone twenty minutes when the ship jerked like a galvanized frog.
"Ram's out," Eric said calmly.
