Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 248: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Down there in the control room, too, were other gadgets as equally important; the atmosphere machine, for example, which kept the air mixture right, drawing on those tanks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen and other gases brought across Space from Venus by the monthly oxygen ship; the refrigerating plant, the gravity machine, the water assembly. Craig heard the crunch of Creepy’s footsteps on the Stairs and turned to the door as the old man shuffled into the room. “Earth just rounded the Sim,” the old man said. “The Venus station took up the load.” Craig nodded. That was routine. When one planet was cut off by the Sun, the substations of the nearest planet took off on an extra load, diverted part of it to the first planet’s Stations, carrying it until it was clear again. He arose from the chair and walked to the port, stared out across the dusty plains. A dot was moving across the near horizon—a speedy dot, seemed to leap across the dead, gray wastes. “Knut’s coming!” he yelled to Creepy. Creepy hobbled for the doorway. “I'll go down to meet him. Knut and me are having a game of checkers as soon as he gets in.” “First,” said Craig, “tell him | want to see him.” “Sure,” said Creepy. Craig tried to sleep but couldn’t He was worried. It was nothing definite, for there seemed no cause to worry. The tracer placed on the big warp revealed that it was moving Slowly, a few feet an hour or so, in a direction away from the center. No other large ones ‘had shown up in the detectors. Everything, for the moment, seemed under control. But there were just little things: vague suspicions and wonderings, snatches here and there that failed to fall into the pattern. CORniclooo SS CO