There's some reaction these days that holds scientists responsible for war. Take it one step further: What happens if "book-learnin'" is held responsible.?
The loss of solar heating has caused the Earth's atmosphere to freeze into thick layers of "snow". The boy's father had worked with a group of other scientists to construct a large shelter, but the earthquakes accompanying the disaster had destroyed it and killed the others. He managed to construct a smaller, makeshift shelter called the "Nest" for his family, where they maintain a breathable atmosphere by periodically retrieving pails of frozen oxygen to thaw over a fire.
Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed--for humans at any rate.
Until the extraordinary affair at Sidmouth, the peculiar species Haploteuthis ferox was known to science only generically, on the strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the Azores, and a decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896 by Mr. Jennings, near Land's End.
Writers have long dreamed of a plot machine, but the machines in Script-Lab did much more than plot the story--they wrote it. Why bother with human writers when the machines did the job so much faster and better?
Take two men and one girl--the eternal triangle--and mix well with an oscilloscope gone haywire. What comes out? With ingredients like these, the result is adventure, terror and, of course, romance.
He knew the theory of repairing the gizmo all right. He had that nicely taped. But there was the little matter of threading a wire through a too-small hole while under zero-g, and working in a spacesuit!