The Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett

Author:Randall Garrett [Garrett, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2007-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

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First, he tried scrubbing. That was what showed him how upset he really was. He had actually scrubbed the armor on his left arm free of mercury when he realized what he was doing and threw the brush down in disgust.

"Use your head, de Hooch!" he told himself. What good would it do to scrub the stuff off of the few places he could reach? In the bulky armor, he was worse than muscle-bound. He couldn't touch any part of his back; he couldn't bend far enough to touch his legs. His shoulders were inaccessible, even. Scrubbing was worse than useless—it was time-wasting.

He picked up the brush again and began scrubbing at the other arm. It gave him something to do while he thought. While he was thinking, he wasn't wasting time.

What would dissolve mercury? Nitric acid. Good old HNO3. Fine. Except that the hot lab was at the other end of the reactor, where the fissure had let all the air out. The bulkheads had dropped, and he couldn't get in. And, naturally, the nitric acid would be in the lab.

For the first time, he found himself hating Willows' guts. If he were around, he could get some acid from the cold lab, or even from the other hot lab at Number One. If Willows—

He stood up and dropped the brush. "Dolt! Boob! Moron! Idiot!" Not Willows. Himself. There was no reason on earth—or Luna—why he couldn't walk over to Number One hot lab and get the stuff himself. The habit of never leaving the lab without thorough decontamination was so thoroughly ingrained in him that he had simply never thought about it until that moment. But what did a little contamination with radioactive mercury mean at a time like this? He could take F corridor to Number One, use the decontamination chamber and the acid from the lab, shuck off his armor there, and come back through E corridor. F could be cleaned up later.

So simple.

He went through the light trap to the next chamber and turned the handle on the sliding door. The door wouldn't budge. It had been warped by the force of the helium blast, and it was stuck in its grooves.

Well, there were tools. The thing could be unstuck.

Peter de Hooch was a determined man, a strong man, and a smart man. But the door was more determined and stronger than he was, and his intelligence didn't give him much of an edge right then. After an hour's hard work, he managed to get the door open about eighteen inches. Then it froze fast and refused to move again. All the power and leverage he could bring to bear was useless. The door had opened all it was going to open. Beyond it, he could see the next radiation trap—and freedom.

Eighteen inches would have been plenty of space for him to get through if he had not been wearing the radiation-proof suit. But he didn't dare take that suit off. By the

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