Thank you."
Murgatroyd put up his lower lip and half smiled with his upper, for he
was not yet quite sure of this radiant beauty, who, according to his
ideas, should have been English and wasn't. Then, with a rather clumsy
and yet eloquent gesture, he showed her the way down to the air-chamber.
She nodded to him with a smile as she passed in through the air-tight
door, and when she heard the levers swing to and the bolts shoot into
their places she felt as though, for the time being, she had said
goodbye to a friend.
Her husband was waiting for her almost fully clad in his
breathing-dress. He had hers all ready to put on, and when the necessary
changes and investments had been made, Zaidie found herself clad in a
costume which was not by any means unlike the diving-dresses of common
use, save that they were very much lighter in construction.
The helmets were smaller, and not having to withstand outside pressure
they were made of welded aluminum, lined thickly with asbestos, not to
keep the cold out, but the heat in. On the back of the dress there was a
square case, looking like a knapsack, containing the expanding
apparatus, which would furnish breathable air for an almost unlimited
time as long as the liquefied air from a cylinder hung below it passed
through the cells in which the breathed air had been deprived of its
carbonic acid gas and other noxious ingredients.
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