tent Slugjet Suit, size 24-B patented' ... here it is.
'Instructions for reviving occupant. The man in this suit is alive if
the translucent face plate is tinted orange.'"

"It is," said Bill Calico with eagerness.

"'Unscrew the seven small x-screws around face plate. Depress lever Z on
right side of chest plate. Loosen gorget, shoulder pieces, pallettes,
brassarts, cuisses....'" They were following the instructions as he
read. He thought, these suits were terrific, they were the best. But you
had to have a billion dollars behind your expedition or you couldn't
afford 'em. Each one cost half as much as a regular-size moon rocket!
They shouldn't have stopped making them, though. They ought to have
tried bringing down the cost. One of these could save a man's life when
nothing else in God's universe could; and a man's life is surely worth
as much as half a moon rocket?

The Bernard Slugjet Suit. Guaranteed to keep a guy alive for a minimum
of 250 years in free space. Guaranteed to let him emerge healthy
and--miraculously--sane, provided he was picked up within the time
limit.

You were jetting toward the edge of the galaxy, say. Your ship ran into
trouble. A big meteor tore out your belly, or your fuel gave out, or any
of a million things happened to crack up the beautiful great spaceship
that was your vehicle and your pride and almost _you_, an extension of
yourself, an expression of your yearning to conquer the stars. So you
got into your slugjet suit and walked out an air-lock, if you had enough
warning, that is. And there you were in space.

Your suit was actually a miniature spaceship itself; if there was land
anywhere near, you aimed for it, loosed your powerful shoulder jets, and
shot toward it. The suit had a range of about five hundred thousand
miles, which was often enough.

But suppose it wasn't. Then you just stayed there in black space, and
you started to touch buttons in the big gloves, to pull levers on the
chest, and to activate other circuits by the sound of your voice. And
the suit became a world for you, a world that kept you healthy and sane
for a quarter of a millennium.

Your life processes were slowed down to a pace of only a crawl and a
mumble, next door to death. Your breathing couldn't be detected. Your
heart beat six times to the hour. Drugs did it, and vapors, the
depressants of a hundred planets gathered and refined by Bernard for
his suits.

You didn't sleep; you didn't need to. Yo