ontamination chamber. There
must be some way he could get the mercury off the suit--because he
couldn't take the suit off until the mercury was gone.

* * * * *

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 HNO{3}. 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 g