[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On Jupiter's moons great treasure awaits
a daring man--and so does Death!
I
His employer had paid enormously to have the small ship camouflaged
as a chunk of asteroid-belt rock, and Gil Murdoch had successfully
maneuvered it past the quarantine. Now it lay snugly melted into the
ice; and if above them enough water had boiled into space to leave a
scar, that was nothing unique on Ganymede's battered surface. In any
case, the Terran patrols weren't likely to come in close.
Murdoch applied heat forward and moved the ship gingerly ahead.
"What are you doing now?" Waverill demanded.
Murdoch glanced at the blind man. "Trying to find a clear spot, sir, so
I can see into the place."
"What for? Why don't you just contact them?"
"Just being careful, sir. After all, we don't know much about them."
Murdoch kept the annoyance out of his voice. He had his own reasons
for wanting a preliminary look at the place, though the aliens had
undoubtedly picked them up thousands of miles out and knew exactly
where they were now.
Something solid, possibly a rock imbedded in the ice, bumped along the
hull. Murdoch stopped the ship, then moved on more slowly.
The viewscreens brightened. He stopped the drive, then turned off the
heat forward. Water, milky with vapor bubbles, swirled around them,
gradually clearing. In a few minutes it froze solid again and he could
see.
They were not more than ten feet from the clear area carved out of the
ice. Murdoch had the viewpoint of a fish in murky water, looking into
an immersed glass jar. The place was apparently a perfect cylinder,
walled by a force-field or whatever held back the ice. He could see
the dark translucency of the opposite wall, about fifty yards away
and extending down eighty or ninety feet from the surface. He'd only
lowered the ship a third that far, so that from here he looked down
upon the plain one-story building and the neat lawns and hedges around
it.
The building and greenery occupied only one-half of the area, the half
near Murdoch being paved entirely with gravel and unplanted. That, he
presumed, was where they'd land. The building was fitted to the shape
of its half-circle, and occupied most of it, like a half cake set in a
round box with a little space around it. A gravel walkway, bordered by
grass, ran along the straight front of the building and around the back
curve of it. The hedges surrounded the half-circle at the outside.
There was an inconspicuous closed door in the middle of the building.
There were no windows in the flat gray wall.
The plants looked Terran, and apparently were rooted in soil, though
there must be miles of ice beneath. Artificial sunlight poured on the
whole area from the top. Murdoch had heard, and now was sure, that
something held an atmosphere in the place.
"What are we waiting for?" Waverill wanted to know.