Barger leaped, and Haller fell in a heap upon the floor. Something small, flaring white-hot, had dropped from the top of the tank, was sputtering on the floor plates. A moment later it winked out, but where it had lain, a small hole, the size of a man's finger, was visible.
"A hole!" Barger exclaimed. "Burnt right through the metal! What in hell...."
"Don't you see?" A tight-lipped grin crossed Haller's face. "This was, as I said, a fuel tank. Little drops of tri-oxine have dried on the top, years ago when it was drained, and your match ignited one! When you think how the toughest steel rocket tube linings burn through in a year or less, it's no wonder this bronze alloy melts!" He snatched up the jar of phosphorescent water, held it near the wall of the tank. Here and there tiny brown globules were visible, dried rocket-fuel, like sap on a tree's bark.
"Okay," said Barger, unimpressed. "But how are you going to hold it against the top while it's burning through? Soon as it's lit, it falls ... and I don't want to be beneath, thanks."
"What's wrong with the floor?" Haller was already scraping the bits of dried fuel from the walls. "The whole top strata of this asteroid is like a heap of stones. The small fragments we can lug into this tank through the hole, and the big ones don't fit so close that we can't squeeze between them! Get busy!"
Slowly from walls and roof they collected the bits of long-dried fuel. A globule here, a flake there, it was painfully slow work. At the end of an hour they had a double handful of the brown crystals.
"Enough for a try, anyhow," Haller muttered. "Let's see!" He arranged the brown grains in a circle perhaps two feet in diameter. "Stand clear! Here goes!"
A match flickered in the darkness, described a short arc as Haller tossed it toward the circle. At once a ring of lurid fire flared up and a searing gust of heat swept through the metal tank. For only a moment it burned, then died away, leaving the floor plates around it a cherry red. Barger, staring, gave a cry of triumph.
"Worked!" he exclaimed. "Burned through!" He poured a portion of the phosphorescent water on the bronze, watched clouds of steam arise.
"Now the work starts!" Haller's grin was fierce. Kicking aside the metal disc that had been melted from the floor, he peered into the opening. Small stones, chunks of meteoric rock, lay beneath.