He crossed the chart-room, and, unlocking a cupboard at the farther end, dragged forth the three suits of vacuum armor. They were of simple design, made of heavy rubber cloth and surmounted by copper helmets resembling those worn by divers. Each wearer carried a cylindrical tank, supported upon the shoulders, for his supply of liquid air.
"The first thing," continued Burke, "is to load up our knapsacks."
Bennie and Atterbury assisted him in unclamping the cover of one of the large retainers that supplied the Ring with fresh air. In appearance, it was not unlike a gigantic milk-can, and caused Burke to remark,
"I pity anyone who tried to steal _that_ milk!"
Atterbury produced a metal ladle from the closet, while Bennie unfastened the tops of the cylinders, and Rhoda held her breath as she peered into the big retainer as the engineer thrust the ladle into its mysterious contents, which gave out dense clouds of white smoke.
"Hot nothing!" replied Bennie. "It's over three hundred degrees below Fahrenheit!"
Bennie held the cylinder for Atterbury, while the latter attempted to pour it in through a funnel, but, in spite of all his care, some of the liquid fell upon the floor with a hiss like that of water dropping upon a red-hot stove.
"What makes it smoke like that?" asked Rhoda. "Of course, I know it isn't _hot_!"
"Condensed moisture," explained Bennie. "We never could have made this trip without it!"
With the greatest caution, they finally succeeded in filling all the cylinders, and Burke and Atterbury started to don their vacuum armor. Bennie was about to do the same, when he noticed an expression of disappointment on Rhoda's face.
"_You_ go!" he said. "I've got to fix up something inside. Go out along with the others and look around. I'll take my turn when you come back. You won't want to stay long, I guess!"
"Oh, thanks!" she cried. "I _do_ want to see what the moon is like!"
The men had by this time got into their strange costumes, but Rhoda found the arrangement of her skirts more or less complicated and was forced to retire to the galley, where she finally adjusted her attire to lunar requirements. Then, all four of them rolled the huge cylinder of uranium into the air-lock, and Atterbury closed and fastened the inner air-tight door behind them. They stood crowded together for a moment in that confined space, like divers in a divingbell, unable to speak to each other, and fully mindful of the fact that they were about to essay an experiment in physics never before attempted or even conceived of--the entry of a human being into a perfect vacuum.
