ordering me around. I will get us there.”
I rolled over and tried to go to sleep. I heard Yuri suit up and go out. A little later there were two faint thunks as the hoses disconnected from the way station. Then Yuri came back in, unsuited and sat down in the driver’s chair.
The Cat lurched forward and then settled down to a steady pace. I decided to stop worrying and let Yuri handle things for a while. I was feeling better every minute, but another forty winks wouldn’t do any harm. I let the gentle swaying of the Walker rock me to sleep.
I woke around noon; I must have been more tired than I thought. Yuri tossed me a self-heating can of corned beef; I opened it and devoured the contents immediately.
I passed the next hour or so reading a novel. Or rather, I tried. I dozed off and woke up in mid-afternoon. There was a lot of sedative in that medicine.
I got up, pulled on my coveralls and walked over to the control board. “Walked” isn’t quite the right word—with my bunk and the table down, the Cat resembled a roomy telephone booth.
I sat down next to Yuri. We were making good time across a flat, black plain. There was an inch or so of topsoil—dust, really—that puffed up around the Cat’s feet as they stepped. The dust comes from the cycle of freezing and thawing of ammonia ice caught in the boulders. The process gradually fractures the Ganymede rock, breaking it down from pebbles to shards to BB shot to dust. In a century or so somebody will grow wheat in the stuff.
Some of the soil is really specks of interplanetary debris that has fallen on Ganymede for the last three billion years. All over the plain were little pits and gouges. The bigger meteors had left ray craters, splashing white across the reddish-black crust. The dark ice is the oldest stuff on Ganymede. A big meteor can crack through it, throwing out bright, fresh ice. The whole history of the solar system is scratched out on Ganymede’s ancient scowling face, but we still don’t know quite how to read all the scribblings. After the fusion bugs have finished, a lot of the intricate, grooved terrain will be gone. A little sad, maybe—the terraced ridges are beautiful in the slanting yellow rays of sunset—but there are others like them, on other moons. The solar system has a whole lot more snowball moons like Ganymede than it has habitable spots for people. Just like every other age in human history, there are some sad choices to make.
Yuri sidestepped a thick-lipped crater, making the servos negotiate the slope without losing speed. He had caught the knack pretty fast. The bigger craters had glassy rims, where the heat of impact had melted away the roughness. Yuri could pick his way through that stuff with ease. I leaned back and admired the view. Io’s shadow was a tiny dot on Jupiter’s eternal dancing bands. The thin little ring made a faint line in the sky, too near Jupiter to really see clearly. You had to look away from it, so your side vision could pick it out. There was a small moon there, I knew, slowly breaking up under tidal stresses and feeding stuff into the ring. It’s too small to see from Ganymede, though. You get the feeling, watching all these dots of light swinging through the sky, that Jupiter’s system is a giant clockwork, each wheel and cog moving according to intricate laws. Our job was to fit into this huge cosmic machine, without getting mashed in the gears.
I yawned, letting all these musings drop away, and glanced at the control board. “You do a full readout this morning?”
Yuri shrugged. “Everything was in order last night.”
“Huh. Here—” I punched in for a systems inventory. Numbers and graphs rolled by on the liquid display. Then something went red.
“Hey. Hey. B and C tanks aren’t filled,” I said tensely.
“What? I put the system into filling mode last night. The meter read all right this morning.”
“Because you’ve got it set on A tank. You have to fill each independently,
I rolled over and tried to go to sleep. I heard Yuri suit up and go out. A little later there were two faint thunks as the hoses disconnected from the way station. Then Yuri came back in, unsuited and sat down in the driver’s chair.
The Cat lurched forward and then settled down to a steady pace. I decided to stop worrying and let Yuri handle things for a while. I was feeling better every minute, but another forty winks wouldn’t do any harm. I let the gentle swaying of the Walker rock me to sleep.
I woke around noon; I must have been more tired than I thought. Yuri tossed me a self-heating can of corned beef; I opened it and devoured the contents immediately.
I passed the next hour or so reading a novel. Or rather, I tried. I dozed off and woke up in mid-afternoon. There was a lot of sedative in that medicine.
I got up, pulled on my coveralls and walked over to the control board. “Walked” isn’t quite the right word—with my bunk and the table down, the Cat resembled a roomy telephone booth.
I sat down next to Yuri. We were making good time across a flat, black plain. There was an inch or so of topsoil—dust, really—that puffed up around the Cat’s feet as they stepped. The dust comes from the cycle of freezing and thawing of ammonia ice caught in the boulders. The process gradually fractures the Ganymede rock, breaking it down from pebbles to shards to BB shot to dust. In a century or so somebody will grow wheat in the stuff.
Some of the soil is really specks of interplanetary debris that has fallen on Ganymede for the last three billion years. All over the plain were little pits and gouges. The bigger meteors had left ray craters, splashing white across the reddish-black crust. The dark ice is the oldest stuff on Ganymede. A big meteor can crack through it, throwing out bright, fresh ice. The whole history of the solar system is scratched out on Ganymede’s ancient scowling face, but we still don’t know quite how to read all the scribblings. After the fusion bugs have finished, a lot of the intricate, grooved terrain will be gone. A little sad, maybe—the terraced ridges are beautiful in the slanting yellow rays of sunset—but there are others like them, on other moons. The solar system has a whole lot more snowball moons like Ganymede than it has habitable spots for people. Just like every other age in human history, there are some sad choices to make.
Yuri sidestepped a thick-lipped crater, making the servos negotiate the slope without losing speed. He had caught the knack pretty fast. The bigger craters had glassy rims, where the heat of impact had melted away the roughness. Yuri could pick his way through that stuff with ease. I leaned back and admired the view. Io’s shadow was a tiny dot on Jupiter’s eternal dancing bands. The thin little ring made a faint line in the sky, too near Jupiter to really see clearly. You had to look away from it, so your side vision could pick it out. There was a small moon there, I knew, slowly breaking up under tidal stresses and feeding stuff into the ring. It’s too small to see from Ganymede, though. You get the feeling, watching all these dots of light swinging through the sky, that Jupiter’s system is a giant clockwork, each wheel and cog moving according to intricate laws. Our job was to fit into this huge cosmic machine, without getting mashed in the gears.
I yawned, letting all these musings drop away, and glanced at the control board. “You do a full readout this morning?”
Yuri shrugged. “Everything was in order last night.”
“Huh. Here—” I punched in for a systems inventory. Numbers and graphs rolled by on the liquid display. Then something went red.
“Hey. Hey. B and C tanks aren’t filled,” I said tensely.
“What? I put the system into filling mode last night. The meter read all right this morning.”
“Because you’ve got it set on A tank. You have to fill each independently,
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