The time-course of the rate of oxygen consumption (QO2) has been measured in the excised frog sartorius muscle after single isometric tetani of 0.1-1.0 s at 20 degrees C. To measure deltaQO2(t), the change in QO2 from its basal level, a novel method was devised, based on the validity in this tissue of the one-dimensional diffusion equation for oxygen, established in the preceding paper. After a tetanus, deltaQO2 reached a peak within 45-90 s, then declined exponentially, and could be well fit by deltaQO2(t) = QO + Q1(epsilon -k1t - epsilon-k2t). tau2 (= 1/k2), which characterized the rise of deltaQO2, was a decreasing function of tetanus duration (range: from 1.1 +/- 0.28 min [nu = 5] for a 0.1-s tetanus, to 0.34 +/- 0.05 min [nu = 8] for a 1.0-sec tetanus). tau1 (= 1/k1), which characterized the decline of deltaQO2, was not dependent on tetanus duration, with mean 3.68 +/- -.24 min (nu = 46). A forthcoming paper in this series shows that these kinetics of deltaQO2 are the responses to impulse-like changes in the rate of ATP hydrolysis. The variation of tau2 with tetanus duration thus indicates the involvement of a nonlinear process in the coupling of O2 consumption to ATP hydrolysis. However, the monoexponential decline of deltaQO2(t), with time constant independent of tetanus duration, suggests that during this phase, the coupling is rate-limited by a single reaction with apparent first order kinetics.