Rolf turned, tight-lipped, from the communicator panel and said,
“_Crehut_, a video white-out. They’re either cripped or dead!”
Lynne said, “What are you going to do?” In the confusion of bringing
the ship in, she was unable to sort out the mental messages she was
receiving. But she got a wild impression of thoughts and emotions,
transcending anything human. It was like being inside some immeasurably
vast, utterly lunatic cathedral.
“I’m going to land right beside those other ships--if I don’t go crazy
first,” said Rolf. He had to speak aloud, just as Lynne did, because in
the turmoil of telepathic disturbance it was impossible to select and
tune personal thoughts.
It was a rocky landing, since the apparently level ground proved to
be dangerously uneven as they settled down upon it. But although the
ship rocked in heart-stopping fashion, he finally got it steady on
its pintels and mopped sweat from his brow. For a long moment, he sat
before the control panel, letting the strain leave him.
With the thrum of the engines silent, Lynne became aware of another
steady pulse of power--unheard, for its pitch was far too great for
human eardrums. Her mind seemed to burst with visions of the planets,
of the stars, of distant nebulae and galaxies, interspersed with
unheard paeans of indescribably magnificent music, of concepts of such
surpassing beauty, of such dread and terror and love and ugliness and
sheer passion that, inevitably, Lynne found herself recalling Mr. Mole,
in Kenneth Grahame’s archaic but still-loved _Wind in the Willows_,
when that little animal heard the magic Pipes of Pan and found their
song beyond his limited ken.
“I must be mad,” she told Rolf.
He said, “You and I both, _vinral_. But if we both get it, we must be
sane. What in _purt_ do you suppose it is?”
Lynne tried to put it into words. “It’s like--like--It’s far beyond
anything we’ve ever encountered.”
Rolf got up and told her, “Come on--let’s find out what’s going on.
This is like being caught inside an old-fashioned circus calliope going
full blast.”
He crossed the tiny cabin, almost floating in the light gravity of the
satellite, opened a locker and got a couple of heavy-duty space-suits.
It was the first time Lynne had seen such an outfit save in vidar
entertainments and, by the time Rolf had locked her into it, she felt
like a cross between an Egyptian mummy and a deep-sea diver of several
centuries before. It was hot and her nose itched and there was no way
to scratch it. But the heavy composition of the suit mercifully blacked
out some of the radiant alien messages that had been overwhelming her
thoughts.
They rode lightly to the surface on the external elevator, and Lynne’s
impression of appalling desolation was reinforced when she looked at
the scenery about her from ground-level. Callisto was a nightmare moon
for anyone conditioned to the inner planets. The great curving bulk of
Jupiter was shadowed but light reflected from its large inner moons
made its appalling, ominous immensity all too evident. It looked as if
it were going to fall on her and crush her to death.
A couple of heavy-space-suited figures emerged from one of the two
big ships a half-kilometer away and slowly descended on an exterior
elevator. Rolf, speaking into his suit-mike, said, “Hello there--are
you from Earth?”
Lynne staggered under the force of a mental blow that threatened to
black her out as Rolf spoke. From the plain beyond the shelter of the
rock revetment behind which they had landed, came a sudden lavender
flash, followed by a rolling roar. The two space-suited figures
beckoned to them and she found herself running clumsily toward them.
Moments later, they were being taken aboard the larger ship.
Inside, in the compression chamber, suits were removed and a
coarse-haired, pale-faced, young-old man said, “Welcome to headache
satellite. I’m Lieutenant Patrick Suzuki, commandant pro tem of what’s
left to Callisto Mission. Who are you?”
Rolf explained, adding “I must add that we are unauthorized.”
The lieutenant swore amiably, and added, “Never mind the red tape.
Thank the gods of my ancestors you’re here.” He went on to explain
that they were completely cut off from communication with the outside.
“If we put on any circuit, we draw another blast. One more and the
revetment may go and bury us. We can’t leave, we can’t send for help.
We wouldn’t dare let anyone else land if we could get to them.”
“What’s the cause of your trouble?” Lynne asked him, glancing around
her at the unshaven faces and informal attire of the Earthmen in the
big ship’s wardroom, to which they had adjourned after removing their
heavy space-suits.
She received impressions of boredom, of controlled fright, of lust
toward herself. For the moment, the overpowering entity, whatever it
was, was not blanketing all thought, though the pulse of its power
never ceased.
Suzuki told them. Callisto had been placed under strict E.I.A.
restriction because of the discovery upon that satellite, by geologists
of the first expedition to reach her, of a rare new element whose
properties promised to outdo any of the radioactives.
“It’s right out there,” he added, gesturing toward the plain. “Right on
the surface. We didn’t want to risk an interplanetary rush. So E.I.A.
sealed off the satellite and sent Callisto Mission out to make further
study and begin test mining operations.”
Listening to him, Lynne wondered why so many otherwise human and
reasonably slangy young officials fell into the jabberwocky jargon
of government reports once they began discussing their business. It
was, she decided, drilled into them during their schooling, a sort of
illiterate but precise articulateness.
The element lay over most of the plain, an area of seven square
kilometers, much of it right on the surface. It was, Suzuki said, “of a
sort of opalescent yellow, soft to the touch despite the cold here. It
looked like all we’d have to do was inaugurate operations, take samples
and return to home base.”
Proceeding methodically under the leadership of Wing Officer Arthur
Mitropoulos, Callisto Mission had set up camp on the plane, right over
the mine it intended to open. On the “morning” operations were to
begin, Suzuki and the maintenance crew had been alerted to stand by to
relay messages to base from the ships. Then had come the blast--utterly
destroying camp and machinery and all the men in it.
“We tried to send an S.O.S.,” he concluded, “and were blasted again.
Three more times it happened. So we put out the fuel cans and sat
tight. Frankly, we’re stumped. We don’t know what to do next.”
Within the metal skin of the ship, Lynne and Rolf could exchange
telepathic messages, but it would be impossible to send one out through
space with enough power to reach Mars or any possible rescue ship that
might be winging its way toward Callisto. Lynne thought, _What about
our suits? They didn’t feel like metal._