ive 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 time he got out of the suit, the intensely
radioactive mercury on its surface would have made his death only a
matter of time. And not much time at that.

He told himself that if it were simply a matter of running to the
control room to shut off the D-H reactor, he'd do it. That could have
been done before he lost consciousness. But it wasn't that easy. Damping
the reaction took time and control. The stuff had to be eased back
slowly. Shutting off the Ditmars-Horst would simply blow a hole in the
crust of Luna and kill everyone if he did it now. There were four or
five men out there who would die if he pulled anything foolish like
that. The explosion wouldn't be as powerful as the Instantanium 512
reaction would be, but it would be none the less deadly for all that.

There had to be either a way to scrape the mercury off the suit or a way
to open the door another six inches.

Or, he added suddenly, a way to get safely out of the suit.

* * *

At the end of another twenty minutes, he had still thought of nothing.
He wandered around the decontamination room, looking at everything,
hoping he might see something that would give him a clue. He didn't.

He went into the antechamber of the reactor and glared at the door in
the firewall. The instruments said that things were getting pretty
fierce on the other side of that wall. Temperature: Two ninety-five and
still rising. Pressure? He carefully cracked the inlet of the sampling
chamber and got a soft hiss. The helium was expanding from the heat,
that was all. Part of the trouble with the reactor, he thought, was the
high percentage of oxygen and nitrogen that had mixed in during the ten
minutes or so that the door was open. All hell was fixing to bust loose
in there, and he, Peter de Hooch, was right next to it.

He walked back into the decontamination chamber.

What would dissolve mercury?

Mercury would dissolve gold. Would gold dissolve mercury?