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to press inward on her arms and legs.
"Migod, it's _cold_!"
Her involuntary comment brought a chuckle from the rest. Her suit imp
quickly equalized pressure and raised the suit's temperature in the affected
regions. Comfortable again, Shirley disengaged the locked-down winch and
pulled it towards the end of the overhead beam. They waited until the first
bead of light from Barnard appeared from behind Gargantua, signalling that the
eclipse was over.
"We've only got three hours of daylight left," said George. "Let's get
a hustle on."
He and Shirley made their way down the rungs of the ladder and past the
spot where the rungs became steps on one of the landing struts, while Thomas
and Richard used the winch to lower the excited flouwen to the surface. There,
George steadied them while Shirley undid the lowering harness and sent it back
up again. Just before George reached the bottom rung, he had thought briefly
about saying something notable as he stepped off the landing pad onto this new
world. But since the "people" who owned the world were watching them from a
distance, he decided that it would be inappropriate.
The second group soon cycled through and made it down to the ground via
either winch line or ladder rungs. The visitors were quiet a moment, trying to
take in the entire scene before them. In the sky overhead, Gargantua hung, as
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huge as the palm of an upstretched hand, nearly dark except for a fingernail
slice of light along the side towards Barnard. Coming out from behind it,
Barnard shone dimly, half as big as the Sun appeared from Earth. Off on the
other side, two of the other alien moons swung in their orbits. All around the
gray-black basaltic knob they were standing on was ice. It looked so frozen
that Arielle, watching out the lounge window forty meters above them,
shivered, and no longer regretted that duty required her to stay within the
ship in case they needed to take off again in a hurry.
Deirdre stepped silently off to one side of the group, every nerve
within her tingling with awareness of her position. Her mind was racing --
almost she wished she had a recorder like Reiki's -- as she strove to take in
and absorb the uniqueness of this world. Deliberately, she relaxed her
muscles, the better to experience the wonders all around her. Barnard's
distant light enabled her to see curious shapes in the mounded and tumbled ice
-- wind and spray had carved some of the taller drifts into fantastic tunnels
and peaks, which glittered, and threw strange shadows. The wind thrust
exploratory gusts into every crevice, whirled flakes of snow about, and
whistled little sounds, constantly changing. Stretching before her, the
landscape was essentially flat, but scarred and littered with grotesquely
beautiful shapes in ice and snow. She breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction.
Richard spoke, so softly that only Cinnamon turned to him in concern.
"Damn! How can those toes still hurt?"
His grin reassured her; the sight of this icy world had triggered the
strange sensation, common to amputees, in which the lost member seem to be
aching. Two of Richard's little toes had succumbed to frostbite, years ago in
the French Alps during a rescue, and they were now putting in their belated
message.
Little Red was the first to pronounce judgement. *Hunh! Lumpy! Empty!
Cold! _Nothing_ to see!*
At first glance, George was inclined to agree.
"Yes, there is," said David in quiet jubilation. "Look there!"
Coming toward them was the familiar shape of _Splish_. It looked like a
miniature landing craft, about one meter wide, a half-meter high, and nearly
two meters long, with a broad boatlike front, flippered treads along the side
which allowed it to move equally well on the water, ice, or ocean bottom, and
a large pressurized cargo hold which stored analysis equipment and samples. On
the top were cameras that acted as its eyes, while its arms were two
manipulators that could extend to reach any part of itself for repair work.
After a brief, confirmatory glance at the basalt knob they had landed
on, Sam and Richard walked toward the approaching robot in order to look more
closely at the surface of the ice surrounding the knob. Deirdre followed.
"Fresh snow, from that last big burst of geyser activity." Sam's gloved
hand picked up a portion of the top layer and squeezed it. When he opened his
hand, the snow fell from his fingers.
"Gritty, and pretty dry," he said. "Ice dust."
Deirdre scuffed her boots in the snow, reaching crusted ice at a depth
of a few inches. "Not a big snowfall," she commented, hoping Sam would say
more. She knew of Sam's habit of keeping up a running commentary when
analyzing some portion of terrain -- his every word picked up by his suit imp,
stored in memory in his suit computer, and transferred back to James on
_Prometheus_ at the first opportunity. Listening to Sam was a good way to
learn a great deal in a short time.
"No, but I reckon there's never a real big snowstorm, the stuff just
keeps coming, piling up, freezing, never melting, an' slowly sublimating away
-- a little at a time, over centuries." The calm words made even Deirdre
shiver. She looked around at the desolation. Apart from the dark-gray rock on
which the lander stood, the terrain seemed all of ice.
_Splish_ arrived at the boundary between the ice and rock, and was
greeted by George. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]