She looked up. He saw tears in the ruby eyes, down the snowy cheeks. But she spoke still more quietly than he, with the briefest of little smiles. “No harm in asking, was there? I understand. You’ve told me what I was trying to deny I knew. You are a good man, Robert.”
“Aw,” he mumbled, and reached to rumple her hair.
The suiting completed, he took her hands between his gloves for a moment, secured a toolpack between his shoulders where the drive unit usually was, and cycled out.
The land gloomed silent around him. Nearing the horizon, the red sun looked bigger than it was. So did the planet, low to the southeast, waxing close to half phase. He could make out a dust storm as a deeper-brown blot on the fulvous crescent. Away from either luminous body, stars were visible-and yonder brilliancy must be Quarta. How joyously they had sailed past it.
Saxtorph started for his ship, in long low-gravity bounds. He didn’t want to fly. The kzinti might have planted a boobytrap, such as an automatic gun that would lock on, track, and fire if you didn’t radio the password. Afoot, he was less of a target.
The ground lightened as he advanced, for the yellow dust lay thicker. No, he saw, it was not actually dust in the sense of small solid particles, but more like spatters or films of liquid. Evidently it didn’t cling to things, like that horrible stuff on Prima. A ghostly rain from space, it would slip from higher to lower places; in the course of gigayears, even cosmic rays would give some slight stirring to help it along downhill. It might be fairly deep near the ship, where its surface was like a blot. He’d better approach with care. Maybe it would prove necessary to fetch a drive unit and flit across.
Saxtorph’s feet went out from under him. He fell slowly, landed on his butt. With an oath he started to get up. His soles wouldn’t grip, his hands skidded on slickness. He sprawled over onto his back. And he was gliding down the slope of the valley floor, gliding down toward the amber-colored blot.
He flailed, kicked up dust, but couldn’t stop. The damned ground had no friction, none. He passed a boulder and managed to throw an arm around. For an instant he was checked, then it rolled and began to descend with him.
“Laurinda! I have a problem,” he managed to say into his radio. “Sit tight. Watch close. If this turns out to be serious, obey your orders.” He reached the blot. It gave way. He sank into its depths.
He had hoped it was a layer of just a few centimeters, but it closed over his head and still he sank. A pit where the stuff had collected from the heights maybe the kzinti, taking due care, had dumped some extra in, gathered across a wide area—yes, this was very likely their boobytrap, and if they had ghosts, Hraou-Captain’s must be yowling laughter. Odd how that name came back to him as he tumbled.
Bottom. He lay in blindness, fighting to curb his breath and heartbeat. How far down? Three meters, four? Enough to bury him for the next several billion years, unless—“Hello, Shep. Laurinda, do you read me? Do you read me?”
His earphones hummed. The wavelength he was using should have expanded its front from the top of the pit, but the material around him must be screening it. Silence outside his suit was as thick as the blackness. Let’s see if he could climb out. The side wasn’t vertical. The stuff resisted his movements less than water would. He felt arms and legs scrabble to no avail. He could feel irregularities in the stone but he could not get a purchase on any. Well, could he swim? He tried. No. He couldn’t rise off the bottom. Too high a mean density compared to the medium; and it didn’t allow him even as much traction as water, it yielded to every motion, he might as well have tried to swim in air.
If he’d brought his drive unit, maybe it could have lifted him out. He wasn’t sure. It was for use in space. This fluid might clog it or ooze into circuitry that there had never been any reason to seal tight. Irrelevant anyway, when he’d left it behind.
“My boy,” he said, “it looks like you’ve had the course.”
That was a mistake. The sound seemed to flap around in the cage of his helmet. If he was trapped, he shouldn’t dwell on it. That way lay screaming panic.
He forced himself to lie quiet and think. How long till Laurinda took off. By rights, she should have already. If he did escape the pit, he’d be alone on the moon. Naturally, he’d try to get at Rover in some different fashion, such as coming around on the hillside. But meanwhile Dorcas would return in Shep, doubtless with the other two. She was incapable of cutting and running, off into futility. Chances were, though, that by the time she got here a kzin auxiliary or two would have arrived. The odds against her would be long indeed.
So if Saxtorph found a way to return topside and repossess Rover—soon—he wouldn’t likely find his wife at the asteroid. And he couldn’t very well turn back and try to make contact, because of those warboats and because of his overriding obligation to carry the warning home. He’d have to conn the ship all by himself, leaving Dorcas behind for the kzinti. The thought was strangling. Tears stung. That was a relief, in the nullity everywhere around. Something he could feel, and taste the salt of on his lips. Was the tomb blackness thickening? No, couldn’t be. How long had he lain buried? He brought his timepiece to his faceplate, but the hell-stuff blocked off luminosity. The blood in his ears hammered against a wall of stillness. Had a whine begun to modulate the rasping of his breath? Was he going crazy? Sensory deprivation did bring on illusions, weirdness’s, but he wouldn’t have expected it this soon.
He made himself remember—sunlight, stars, Dorcas, a sail above blue water, fellowship among men, Dorcas, the tang of a cold beer, Dorcas, their plans for children—they’d banked gametes against the day they’d be ready for domesticity but maybe a little too old and battered in the DNA for direct begetting to be advisable—
Contact ripped him out of his dreams. He reached wildly and felt his gloves close on a solid object. They slid along it, along humanlike lineaments, a spacesuit, no, couldn’t be! Laurinda slithered across him till she brought faceplate to faceplate. Through the black he recognized the voice that conduction carried: “Robert, thank God, I’d begun to be afraid I’d never find you, are you all right?”
“What the, the devil are you doing here?” he gasped.
Laughter crackled. “Fetching you. Yes, mutiny. Court-martial me later.” Soberness followed: “I have a cable around my waist, with the end free for you. Feel around till you find it. There’s a lump at the end, a knot I made beforehand and covered with solder so the buckyballs can’t get in and make it work loose. You can use that to make a hitch that will hold for yourself, can’t you? Then I’ll need your help. I have two geologist’s hammers with me. Secured them by cords so they can’t be lost. Wrapped tape around the handles in thick bands, to give a grip in spite of no friction. Used the pick ends to chip notches in the rock, and hauled myself along. But I’m exhausted now, and it’s an uphill pull, even though gravity is weak. Take the hammers. Drag me along behind you. You have the strength.”
“The strength—oh, my God, you talk about my strength?” he cried.
The cable was actually heavy—gauge wire from the electrical parts locker, lengths of it spliced together till they reached. The far end was fastened around a great boulder beyond the treacherous part of the slope. Slipperiness had helped as well as hindered the ascent, but when he reached safety, Saxtorph allowed himself to collapse for a short spell. He returned to Laurinda’s earnest tones: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I should have guessed. But it didn’t occur to me—such quantities gathered together like this—I simply thought ’nebular dust,’ without stopping to estimate what substance would become dominant over many billions of years—”