They found it at last, a jagged, slowly revolving ball that looked
incredibly desolate, slag from some solar furnace. The telescope showed
no life. The ball had hardened as it whirled, and the molten rock
had frozen instantly, in frigid space, into spiky, giant crags and
stalagmites. No atmosphere, no water, no sign of life in any form.
The crystal O'Brien held had changed. A pale light streamed from it.
O'Brien's face was tensely eager.
"This is it. Set the ship down, Hastings."
The pilot made a grimace, but bent toward the controls. It was a
ticklish task at best, for he had to match the ship's speed to the
speed of the asteroid's revolution and circle in, describing a
narrowing spiral. Rocket ships are not built for maneuverability. They
blast their way to ground and up again through sheer roaring power.
She settled bumpily on the iron-hard surface of the asteroid, and
Arnsen looked through the thick visiglass at desolation that struck
a chill to his heart. Life had never existed here. It was a world
damned in the making, a tiny planetoid forever condemned to unbearable
night and silence. It was one with the darkness. The sun-glare, in
the absence of atmosphere, made sharp contrasts between light and jet
shadow. The fingers of rock reached up hungrily, as though searching
for warmth. There was nothing menacing about the picture. It was
horrible in its lifelessness; that was all.
It was not intended for life. Arnsen felt himself an intruder.
O'Brien met his glance. The boy was smiling, rather wryly.
"I know," he said. "It doesn't look very promising, does it? But this
is the place."
"Maybe--a million years ago," Arnsen said skeptically. "There's nothing
here now."
Silently O'Brien put the crystal in the giant's hand.
From it a pulse of triumph burst out! Exultation! The psychic wave
shook Arnsen with its intensity, wiped doubt from his face. Invisibly
and intangibly, the jewel shouted its delight!
The glow within it waxed brighter.
Hastings said abruptly, "Time to eat. Metabolism's higher in space. We
can't afford to miss a meal."
"I'm going out," O'Brien said.
But Arnsen seconded the pilot. "We're here now. You can afford to wait
an hour or so. And I'm hungry."
They opened thermocans in the galley and gulped the hot food standing.
The ship had suddenly become a prison. Even Hastings was touched with
the thirst to know what awaited them outside.
"We circled the asteroid," he said at last, his voice argumentative.
"There's nothing here, Mr. O'Brien. We _saw_ that."
But O'Brien was hurrying back to the control cabin.
The suits were cumbersome, even in the slight gravity. Hastings tested
the oxygen tanks strapped on the backs, and checked the equipment with
stringent care. A leak would be fatal on this airless world.
* * * * *
So they went out through the airlock, and Arnsen, for one, felt his
middle tightening with the expectation of the unknown. His breathing
sounded loud and harsh within the helmet. The tri-polarized faceplates
of the helmets were proof against sun-glare, but they could not
minimize the horrible desolation of the scene.
A world untouched--more lifeless, more terrible, than frigid Jotunheim,
where the Frost Giants dwelt. Arnsen's heavily-leaded boots thumped
solidly on the slag. There was no dust here, no sign of erosion, for
there was no air.
In O'Brien's hand the crystal flamed with milky pallor. The boy's face
was thin and haggard with desire. Arnsen, watching, felt hot fury
against the incubus that had worked its dark spell on the other.
He could do nothing--only follow and wait. His hand crept to the
weighted blackjack in his belt.
He saw the hope slowly fade from O'Brien's eyes. Against his will he
said, "We're only on the surface, Doug. Underground--"
"That's right. Maybe there's an entrance, somewhere. But I don't know.
We may be a thousand years too late, Steve." His gaze clung to the
crystal.
It pulsed triumphantly. Pale flame lanced joyously from it. Alive it
was; Arnsen had no doubt of that now. Alive, and exulting to be home
once more.
Years too late? There was not the slightest trace of any artifact on
this airless planetoid. The bleakness of outer space itself cast a veil
over the nameless world. The three men plodded on.
In the end, they went back to the ship.
The quick night of the tiny world had fallen. The flaming corona of the
sun had vanished; stars leaped into hard, jeweled brilliance against
utter blackness. The sky blazed with cold fires.
Lifeless, alien, strange. It was the edge of the unknown.
They slept at last; metabolism was high, and they needed to restore
their tissues. Hours later Arnsen came to half wakefulness. In his
bunk he rose on one elbow, wondering what had roused him. His mind felt
dulled. He could scarcely tell whether or not he was dreaming.
Across the ship a man's head and shoulders were silhouetted against a
port, grotesquely large and distorted. Beyond, the stars blazed.
They moved. They swirled in a witch-dance of goblin lanterns, dancing,
whirling, spiraling. Blue, yellow, amethyst and milky pearl, streaks of
light golden as the eye of a lioness--and nameless colors, not earthly,
made a patterned arabesque as they danced their elfin saraband there in
the airless dark.
The dark swallowed Arnsen. Slumber took him....
* * * * *
Slowly, exhaustedly, he came back to consciousness. His head ached; his
tongue was thick. For a moment he lay quietly, trying to remember.
Dream? Arnsen cursed, threw his blankets aside, and sprang from the
bunk.
O'Brien was gone. Tex Hastings was gone. Two space-suits had vanished
from their racks.
Arnsen's face twisted into a savage mask. He knew, now, what had been
so wrong about his vision of the night. The man he had glimpsed at the
port had been _outside_ the ship. Doug?
Or Hastings. It did not matter. Both men were gone. He was alone, on
the mystery world.
Arnsen set his jaw, gulped caffeine tablets to clear his head, and
wrenched a space-suit from its hooks. He donned it, realizing that
sunlight once more was pouring down from the distant sun.
Soon he was ready. He went out of the ship, climbed atop it, and stared
around. Nothing. The bleak, light-and-shadow pattern of the asteroid
stretched to the sharply curving horizon all around. There was nothing
else.
Nor were there tracks in the iron-hard slag. He would have to search
at random, by pure guesswork. In the low gravity his leap to the
ground scarcely jarred him. He gripped the billy at his left and moved
forward, toward a high pinnacle in the distance.
He found nothing.
Worst of all, perhaps, was the horrible loneliness that oppressed
him. He was too close to Outside now. He was the only living thing
in a place never meant for human life. The ghastly bleakness of the
asteroid sank like knife-blades into his mind, searing it coldly. There
was no relief when he looked up. The distant sun, with its corona,
was infinitely far away. The rest of the sky held stars, remote, not
twinkling as on Earth, but shining with a cold intensity, a pale fury
relentless and eternal. In the light the heat seared him through his
armor; in the shadows he shivered with cold.
He went on, sick with hate, seeking the unknown thing that had taken
Doug.
The boy was a poet, a dreamer, a fool, easy victim for the terror that
haunted the asteroid.
Exhausted, he turned back. His air supply was running low, and there
was no sign of either Doug or Hastings. He headed for the ship....
It was further than he had thought. He sighted it at last, beneath a
towering stalagmite that thrust up into the harsh sunlight, and his
steps quickened. Why hadn't he thought to bring extra cylinders of
oxygen?
The lock stuck under his gloved, awkward fingers; he wrenched at it
savagely. At last the great valve swung open. He went through the
airlock, opened his visiplate, and took great breaths of the fresher
air. Oxygen cylinders were racked near by; he swung several into
position on his back and clamped them into place. He gulped more
caffeine tablets.
Some instinct made him turn and look back through the port. Over the
uneven ground a space-suited figure was staggering, a quarter of a mile
distant....
Arnsen's heart jumped. In one swift motion he clamped shut his
visiplate and leaped for the airlock. It seemed an eternity before he
was outside, leaping, racing, straining toward the man who had fallen
helpless, a motionless shadow amid the glare. Doug? Hastings?
* * * * *
It was O'Brien, his young face gray with exhaustion and flushed with
oxygen-thirst. For a moment Arnsen thought the boy was dead. He
thrust one arm under O'Brien's back, lifting him; with the other hand
he fumbled at an auxiliary air-hose, thrusting it into the valve in
O'Brien's chin-plate as he ripped away the useless hose. Oxygen flowed
into the boy's suit.
His nostrils distended as he drank in the precious air. Arnsen watched,
teeth bared in a mirthless grin. Good! Color came back to O'Brien's
cheeks--a healthy flush under the deep tan. His eyes opened, looked
into Arnsen's.
"Couldn't find her," he whispered, his voice hollow through the
audiophone. "Deirdre--I couldn't find her, Steve."