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“Some of us, if you want to believe Tolider. You and me, that’s what the government trades to get new information.”
“That makes even less sense if we want to believe Tolider. We wi
‘troublemakers’ — he couldn’t define the term for me.”
“I think I can. We won’t take answers without digging for ourselves. That’s one reason I feel so comfortable with the rest of you.”
“I’ll accept that. So let me point out one other thing. You can tell me what it means. The contestant groups for surface visits to Glug and Bedlam and Crater and Camel and the other planets were all some random mixture of all twenty-five wi
They had made good progress. The north pole would soon be in sight. And in less than an hour, Peron would know the falseness of his final words.
The dome was a hemisphere of tough, flexible polymer, roughly twenty meters across. It was located on the exact axis of rotation of the planet. That axis was highly tilted to Whirlygig’s orbit plane, so at this time of year the golden sun of Cassay was permanently invisible, hovering down over the other pole. Only the weak companion, Cassby, threw its ruddy glow across the landscape, providing adequate light but little heat. There were no free volatiles on Whirlygig, but the surface temperature at polar midwinter would be cold enough to liquefy methane.
Peron and Elissa had been too engrossed in their conversation to make the best speed from the equator, and they arrived last. The others were already landed, clustered around the dome. Sy, Lum and Rosa
Elissa stepped close to see what Sy was doing. “Problems?”
Lum turned and nodded. “Wondered when you two would get here. Problems. Maybe we won’t have a pleasant night out of our suits after all.”
Sy was still crouched over by the door. He seemed rather pleased to be faced with the new challenge.
“See, here’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said. “There’s an airlock with an i
“Motor failure?” asked Peron.
“Could be. The next step is to try to open it manually. But we want to be sure we know what we’re doing. Over on the other side of the dome there’s a big patch of black sealant. Suggests there was a meteor impact, and the self-repairing system took care of it. But we don’t know what that may have done to the inside until we get there. And we don’t know how much damage the mechanical systems may have suffered. Maybe the meteor hit the lock, too. We’ll have to get in and find out.”
Peron stepped forward to peer at the door. It appeared quite intact. “You’re sure there’s no pressure now in the airlock?”
“Positive. The gauge there is working. It showed pressure when we arrived, and as we pumped it went down to zero.”
“So it should be safe enough to open manually,” added Lum. “We were preparing to do that when you two arrived. Come on, another pair of hands may help a lot.” The outer door of the lock gave grudgingly, as Sy, Lum, and Peron jerked hard at it. Finally it was about halfway open, almost enough to admit a person. “My turn now,” said Rosa
She came to the lock door, turned sideways, and began to crab carefully into the opening.
Peron was standing just behind her. He heard Sy’s warning yell at the same moment as the thought came into his own head. Idiots! If we know the outer door isn’t working right, why assume that the controls for the i
He leaned forward, took Rosa
Even as he was jerked and battered inside his suit, his own thoughts remained quite clear. The i
Peron was spi
The others came crowding round him, helping him to his feet. He was amazed to see that he was almost fifty meters away from the dome. Rosa
“I’m all right, too,” said Peron.
There was a long, strange silence from the others. At last Peron noticed a faint, ominous chill on the lower left side of his abdomen. He looked down. His suit there was dreadfully buckled and splintered from chest to thighs, and over his abdomen it showed white instead of the usual metallic gray.
“Air supply working, but he’s lost two tanks.” That was Lum, his voice oddly distorted, from behind him. The suit radio had taken a beating, but it still functioned after a fashion.
“No problem, he can share ours.”
“Motor controls look all right.”
“Food containers gone.”
“We can cover for that.”
“Oh-oh. Thermal system is out. And most of the suit insulation is stripped from the lower torso.”
“That’s a worse problem.”
His radio’s distortion was so bad that Peron found it hard to identify the speakers. He cut to a privacy mode. While they inspected the condition of his equipment, his own mind raced on ahead of them.
Evaluate the options.