I'd soaked for the regulation half-hour now, and the gage of my reserve tank was on red, so I got up to go. "I can see myself at ninety-five," I said. "I'll be patriarch of the Big Tank. The oldest male virgin on campus. See you inside, Chief."

I climbed up the ladder through the second manhole over the formaldehyde sump and stepped out into the sterile precincts of the Big Tank. Home.

I stepped into a shower-booth, let the water blast the formaldehyde off my chastity-suit, popped off my helmet and stripped. Air against sweat-steamed skin felt good. I showered again, naked. I blotted myself dry and dressed in fresh shorts, all the clothing a man needed in the air-conditioned Elysium of the Big Tank. I carried my suit into the locker room to refit it for my next trip outside. Snapping its collar to the bushing of the compressed-air supply and turning on the pressure, I inflated my suit so that it stood on its headless shoulders, ready for inspection.

The wet air-filter that had almost asphyxiated me had been caused, I discovered, by a break in the moisture-trap of the unit. Careful checking assured me that the filter had failed-safe bacteriologically. No outside bugs were in my suit. I might have suffocated, but my corpse would have remained uncorrupted. Such a comfort.

I replaced the trap and filter with a fresh unit and fit a charged bottle of air onto the back of the suit. Then I gave every inch of my chastity-suit an inspection for worn spots, for bubbles forming on its moist surface—an inspection as painstaking and as sure as a window washer's check of his working harness, or an exhibition jumper's folding of his parachute. Satisfied that the suit was all set for my next adventure into the world of normal, septic human beings, I racked it and the helmet in my locker and walked out into the garden.

There I stretched out on the grass under the ultra-violets, refreshing my tan while I waited for Dr. McQueen to come up from the sump.

The garden was my favorite room in the Big Tank. It was in establishing the garden that I'd discovered that my Machiavellian mind is articulated to a pair of green thumbs. The crafty bit came over coffee in the cafeteria. I, of course, just sat there to listen and talk; not even C.U. Cafeteria coffee is aseptic enough for a Lapin to drink, even if there were some way to get a cup of the stuff inside the helmet of a sterility-suit. Anyway, I chided these two graduate students from the botany department about the research possibilities 

 Prev. P 7/32 next