wing another. Maybe, already, mortal damage had been
done. But Endlich couldn't lie down and quit, any more than a snake,
tossed into a fire, could stop trying to crawl out of it, as long as
life lasted. Whether doing so made sense or not, didn't matter. In
Endlich was the savage energy of despair. He was fighting not just Neely
and his crowd, but that other enemy--which was perhaps Neely's main
trouble, too. Yeah--the stillness, the nostalgia, the harshness.

"No--don't want any breakfast," he replied sharply to Rose' last
question. "Gotta work...."

* * * * *

He was like an ant-swarm, rebuilding a trampled nest--oblivious to the
certainty of its being trampled again. First he scrambled and leaped
around, collecting his scattered and damaged gear. He found that his
main atomic battery--so necessary to all that he had to do--was damaged
and unworkable. And he had no hope that he could repair it. But this
didn't stop his feverish activity.

Now he started unrolling great bolts of a transparent, wire-strengthened
plastic. Patching with an adhesive where explosion-rents had to be
repaired, he cut hundred-yard strips, and, with Rose's help, laid them
edge to edge and fastened them together to make a continuous sheet.
Next, all around its perimeter, he dug a shallow trench. The edges of
the plastic were then attached to massive metal rails, which he buried
in the trench.

"Sealed to the ground along all the sides, Honey," he growled to Rose.
"Next we fit in the airlock cabinet, at one corner. Then we've got to
see if we can get up enough air to inflate the whole business. That's
the tough part--the way things are...."

By then the sun was already high. And Endlich was panting
raggedly--mostly from worry. After the massive airlock was in place,
they attached their electrolysis apparatus to the small atomic battery,
which had been used to run the well-driller. The well was in the area
covered by the sheet of plastic, which was now propped up here and there
with long pieces of board from the great box. Over their heads, the
tough, clear material sagged like a tent-roof which has not yet been run
up all the way on its poles.

Sluggishly the electrolysis apparatus broke down the water, discharging
the hydrogen as waste through a pipe, out over the airless surface of
Vesta--but freeing the oxygen under the plastic roof. Yet from the start
it was obvious that, with insufficient electric power