Deep Freeze

"You're set a little deep, Captain," Pat said. "Cut the beam back two marks."

Josh obeyed. It took them almost an hour to remove a square of metal and expose the interior. Pat Barkley was examining the edges of the cut.

"Captain, I think we'd better get Science to check out this metal. If I'm right, and if it's as heat resistant as I think it is, it might be very useful."

"In what way?"

Pat laughed. "Well, I'd guess in a lot of ways, but I have a one-track mind and can think of only one at the moment. Back home I have an atmospheric racer. If I could put a skin of this stuff on its hull, I'd win every race there is. As you know, sir, there's almost no limit to how fast you can push a ship in atmosphere so far as sheer power is concerned. The limiting factor is the ablation factor of the metal in the ship's hull. In agood, tight race I burn off a full quarter-inch of metal. With this stuff—"

An image leapt into Josh's mind. A fiery object made a downward arc into atmosphere, flared to within two thousand feet of X&A headquarters, and went vertically back into space. A hull that could withstand speeds measured in thousands of feet per second in atmosphere would have made possible the wild, buzzing approach to headquarters, but why? You don't get out of a ship going so fast that it's nothing more than a glowing fireball.

"Secure samples, Pat, and we'll turn them over to Science."

Beyond a thin layer of what looked like circuit boards there was a space of honeycomb construction. Each of the interstices was enclosed in a transparent material. Josh's initial efforts had not only sliced through the circuitry, but had opened one of the interstitial spaces. Liquid had condensed on the transparent surface. He inserted a test probe and the suit's tiny computer communicated information to the base unit aboard the Erin Ke

Beyond the honeycomb was the solid metal side of the hydrogen fusion chamber. It wouldn't be healthy to cut into that.

"I think we've done about all we can without doing serious damage,"

Josh said.

"She's all engine, sir, with just a thin layer of electronics and the amino acid chambers under the outside hull."

"And the amino acid chambers are?"

Barkley shrugged inside his suit. "Computer storage chambers? Brain?"

"Primitive weaponry," Josh said. "Missiles that a city aircar could defeat. A rather stupid, head-on attack against a vastly superior ship. How do those things go with an alloy that could take a ship through sun flares and what seems to be an amino acid data storage system?"

They used shoulder jets to propel themselves back to the Erin Ke

It was always a bit spooky to be flying free in space, and both men sighed in relief when they eased up to the ship's air lock and clamped on withmagnetic spots.

Kirsty Girard was waiting for the captain on the bridge. "I've been ru

"Lead on," Josh said.

Kirsty activated a screen. First she showed Josh the overall view of an icy plain below a rise. "Here, the instruments detected metal quite close to the surface," she said. "I ran it through enhancement while you were E.V.A."

"And?" Josh asked.

"It's durametal, sir," Kirsty said. "Two durametal objects close enough together to show as one large metallic deposit on general scan."

"Two spaceships?" Josh asked, his heart pounding as he anticipated her answer.

"That's my guess, sir."

"Angela, have someone put a homing beacon on that ship out there so we can find it again when we want it," Josh ordered. "Kirsty, as soon as that's been done, take us down."

The Erin Ke

"All right, Kirsty," Josh said, his voice low. "Secure. Lift to orbit."

"But we haven't seen the other ship," Sheba protested. Her large emerald eyes were red with weeping.

"I don't think we have to, Queenie," Josh said. "I think you can bet thatthe other ship is the Old Folks."

"They must have violated the first rule of exploration," Angela said.

"What's that?" Sheba asked.

"Even if you discover a place that looks, smells, and states in large print that it's the Garden of Eden and there's a fellow there in a long white robe blessing you, don't land until Science has checked it out," Josh said.

From a stable orbit a robotic probe lowered itself on a tiny column of flux force. It landed near the Fran Webster. Already a white film was forming on the exposed metal of David Webster's Zede Starliner. The probe crawled past the luxury liner and began to play a heat beam over the mound of ice next to it. Optics aboard the probe soon showed an open hatch, and, on the ship's bow, the words Old Folks. Heat melted away ice that blocked the open hatch and soon the transmitter on the probe was beaming up a holoimage. Two humanoid forms lay side by side. Dan Webster had thrown his arm over Fran and that pose had been preserved in death.

"But I was told that they were alive," Sheba protested through tears.

The robot crawled back to the Fran Webster. The cutting properties of a molecular disrupter had to be used to gain entry. Sheba was still weeping silently, but when the hololens focused on the two humanoid forms encased in a sheen of ice she gasped and turned away. Both faces were recognizable. There was no doubt that the dead were David and Ruth Webster.

"Something's wrong," Sheba whispered.

"Yes, very wrong," Josh said bitterly. "They're dead."

"No, that's not what I mean," Sheba said, but she did not have to explain. Angela's face was flushed. Josh averted his eyes. Only Sheba continued to stare in horror at the screen where her brother and sister were frozen in an obscene coital embrace.

CHAPTER TEN

Ordinarily a major vessel from the Department of Exploration and Alien Search would not have spent time and effort in the examination of an ice world. Most frozen planets were located far from the life-giving radiation of their star. The reference books were rich in examples ranging from the eighth and ninth planets of Sol, the sun of Old Earth, to hundreds of other lifeless orbs scattered throughout that relatively small zone of the galaxy which bounded the Confederation of the United Planets. After the reunion, when the mutated men of Old Earth became an integral part of the race, it was de rigueur for every institution of higher learning to end expeditions to Sol's solar system. No system in U.P. space had been more studied, and with the archaeological discovery of the original names of the nine planets there had developed a fad of applying the Old English names for the home planets as a generic label. Thus there were Mercurian planets and Saturnine planets and Plutonian planets.

Almost without exception all known planets could be classified by comparison with one of the nine pups of Old Sol. The planet which some of the crew of the Erin Ke