ver it was he had picked up.

The decontamination room was a mess.

De Hooch stared at the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushed
out of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well, he
could still scrub himself off.

Except that the scrubbers weren't working.

He swore under his breath and twisted the valve that was supposed to
dispense detergent. It did, thank Heaven. He doused himself good with it
and then got under the flowing water.

The radiation level remained exactly where it was.

He walked over and pulled one of the brushes off the defunct scrubber
and sudsed it up. It wasn't until he started to use it that he got a
good look at his arms. He hadn't paid any attention before.

He walked over to the mirror to get a good look.

"You look magnificent," he told his reflection acidly.

The radiation-proof armor looked as though it had been chrome plated.

But de Hooch knew better than that. He knew exactly what had happened.
He was nicely plated all over with a film of mercury, which had
amalgamated itself with the metallic surface of the suit. He was
thoroughly wet with the stuff and no amount of water and detergent would
take it off.

There was something wrong with Number Two Reactor, all right. It had
leaked out some of the Mercury 203 that Ferguson and Metty had been
making.

He thought a minute. It hadn't been leaking out just before he opened
the door in the firewall, because Willows would certainly have noticed
the bright mercury line when he checked with the spectroscope. The stuff
must have been released when the pressure dropped.

He walked back to the anteroom and looked at the sampling chamber. There
were a few droplets of mercury around the inlet.

Thus far, the three pressure explosions had wrecked about everything
that was wreckable, he thought. No, not quite. There was still the
chance that the whole station would go if he didn't get back into the
control room and stop that "powers of two" chain. The detonation of
Instantanium 512 would finish the job by doing what high-pressure helium
could never do.

He glanced at the thermometer. The temperature behind the firewall had
risen to two-forty Centigrade. It wasn't supposed to be above two
hundred. It wasn't too serious, really, because a little heat like that
wouldn't bother a Ditmars-Horst reactor, but it indicated that things
back there weren't working properly.

He turned away and walked back to the dec