Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [106]
"How's it going, Agba?" Leo asked him.
"Pretty good." Agba looked tired. His tan face and skin were marked with red lines, telltales of recent and prolonged time in his work suit. "Those stupid frozen clamps were really slowing us up, but we're just about to the end of them. How's your thing going?"
"All right so far. I came in to prepare the explosive. We're that far along. Do you remember where the devil in all this"—the module's curved walls were packed with supplies—"we keep the slurry explosive?"
"It was over there," Agba pointed.
"Good—" Leo's stomach shrank suddenly. "What do you mean, was?" He only means it's been moved, Leo suggested hopefully to himself.
"Well, we've been using it up at a pretty good clip, blowing open clamps."
"Blowing them open? I thought you were cutting them off."
"We were, but then Tabbi figured out how to pack a small charge that cracked them apart on the line of the vacuum fuse. About half the time they're reusable. The other half they're no more ruined than if we'd cut 'em." Agba looked quite proud of himself.
"You haven't used it all for that, surely!"
"Well, there was a little spillage. Outside, of course," Agba, misapprehending, added in response to Leo's horrified look. He held out a sealed half-liter flask to Leo's inspection. "This is the last of it. I figure it will just about finish the job."
"Nng!" Leo's snatching hands closed around the bottle and clutched it to his stomach like a man smothering a grenade. "I need that! I have to have it!" I have to have ten times that much! his thought howled silently.
"Oh," said Agba. "Sorry." He gave Leo a look of limpid innocence. "Does this mean we have to go back to cutting clamps?"
"Yes," squeaked Leo. "Go," he added. Yes, before he exploded himself.
Agba, with an uncertain smile, ducked back out the airlock. It sealed, leaving Leo alone a moment to hyperventilate in peace.
Think, man, think, Leo told himself. Don't panic. There was something, some elusive fact or factor in the back of his mind, trying to tell him this wasn't the end, but he could not at present recall . . . Unfortunately, a careful mental review of his calculations, keeping track on his fingers (oh, to be a quaddie!) only confirmed his initial fear.
The explosive fabrication of the titanium blank into the complex shape of the vortex mirror required, besides an assortment of spacers, rings, and clamps, three main parts; the ice die, the metal blank, and the explosive to marry the two. Shotgun wedding indeed. And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course. And he'd thought the slurry explosive was going to be the easy part . . .
Forlorn, Leo began systematically going around the Toxic Stores module, checking its contents. An extra flask of slurry explosive might have been misplaced somewhere. Alas, the quaddies were all too conscientious in their inventory control. Each bin contained only what its label proclaimed, no more, no less. Agba had even updated the label on the bin just now; Contents, Slurry Explosive Type B-2, one-half liter flasks. Quantity, 0.
About this time Leo stumbled, literally, over a barrel of gasoline. No, some six barrels of the damn stuff, which had somehow washed up here, now strapped firmly to the walls. God knew where the rest of the hundred tons had gone. Leo wished it all in Hell, where it might at least be of some conceivable use. He would gladly trade the whole hundred tons of it for four aspirins. A hundred tons of gasoline, of which—
Leo blinked, and let out an "aaah" of exultation.
Of which a liter or so, mixed with tetranitro methane, would make an even more powerful explosive.
He would have to look it up, to be sure—he would have to look up the exact proportions in any case—but he was certain he had remembered aright.