The pyramid was built of bottles, hundreds of bottles that flashed and
glinted as if with living fire, picking up and breaking up the misty
light that filtered from the distant sun and still more distant stars.
Frederick West took a slow step forward, away from the open port of
his tiny ship. He shook his head and shut his eyes and opened them
again and the pyramid was still there. So it was no figment, as he had
feared, of his imagination, born in the darkness and the loneliness of
his flight from Earth.
It was there and it was a crazy thing. Crazy because it should not be
there, at all. There should be nothing here on this almost unknown slab
of tumbling stone and metal.
For no one lived on Pluto's moon. No one ever visited Pluto's moon.
Even he, himself, hadn't intended to until, circling it to have a look
before going on to Pluto, he had seen that brief flash of light, as
if someone might be signaling. It had been the pyramid, of course. He
knew that now. The stacked-up bottles catching and reflecting light.
Behind the pyramid stood a space hut, squatted down among the jagged
boulders. But there was no movement, no sign of life. No one was
tumbling out of the entrance lock to welcome him. And that was strange,
he thought. For visitors must be rare, if, indeed, they came at all.
Perhaps the pyramid really was a signaling device, although it would
be a clumsy way of signaling. More likely a madman's caprice. Come to
think of it, anyone who was sufficiently deranged to live on Pluto's
moon would be a fitting architect for a pyramid of bottles.
The moon was so unimportant that it wasn't even named. The spacemen, on
those rare occasions when they mentioned it at all, simply called it
"Pluto's moon" and let it go at that.
No one came out to this sector of space any more. Which, West told
himself parenthetically, is exactly why I came. For if you could slip
through the space patrol you would be absolutely safe. No one would
ever bother you.
No one bothered Pluto these days. Not since the ban had been slapped on
it three years before, since the day the message had come through from
the scientists in the cold laboratories which had been set up several
years before that.
No one came to the planet now. Especially with the space patrol on
guard ... although there were ways of slipping through. If one knew
where the patrol ships would be at certain times and build up one's
speed and shut off the engines, coasting on momentum in the shadow of
the planet, one could get to Pluto.
West was near the pyramid now and he saw that it was built of whisky
bottles. All empty, very empty, their labels fresh and clear.
West straightened up from staring at the bottles and advanced toward
the hut. Locating the lock, he pressed the button. There was no
response. He pressed it again. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the lock
swung in its seat. Swiftly he stepped inside and swung over the lever
that closed the outer lock, opened the inner one.
Dim light oozed from the interior of the hut and through his earphones
West heard the dry rustle of tiny claws whispering across the floor.
Then a gurgling, like water running down a pipe.
Heart in his mouth, thumb hooked close to the butt of his pistol, West
stepped quickly across the threshold of the lock.
A man, clad in motheaten underwear, sat on the edge of the cot. His
hair was long and untrimmed, his whiskers sprouted in black ferocity.
From the mat of beard two eyes stared out, like animals brought to
bay in caves. A bony hand thrust out a whisky bottle in a gesture of
invitation.
The whiskers moved and a croak came from them. "Have a snort," it said.