“Schön,” Groton said succinctly.
Ivo waited for Afra to object, but there was no reply from the intercom. Presumably she was waiting for him to object. The implications—
“This,” said Groton, “is a break. We won’t have to set up an orbit; one is waiting here for us.”
“But we have to land on Triton,” Ivo protested. “Schön couldn’t possibly provide the gravity we need. Schön-moon, I mean.” He had been made edgily aware of the unsatisfied curiosity about Schön-person that continued to nag at the others’ minds.
“No question there. But we can’t simply settle down with the macroscope on Joseph’s nose. We’re geared for space; a landing would crush us.”
“But if the ship stood up under ten G’s, and this is only a quarter G—”
“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. The ten G’s were steady and uniform; the drop would be another matter. The effect of it would be many times ten G.”
“Oh.” At least Groton wasn’t superior about his knowledge. “But if the ship can’t land, and we can’t stay in free-fall—”
“Planetary module. We’ll get down all right. It will actually be easier to shuttle back and forth, and we won’t have to risk the macroscope on land. Just so long as we don’t lose Joseph in the sky after we desert him. But with an object as big and bright as Schön to zero in on, we won’t have a problem. We’ll be able to spot that in the sky without a telescope, any time.”
The reasoning evidently appealed to Afra, because they were already phasing in on Schön. The block of ice seemed to drift closer, and the pits and bumps of its frigid surface magnified. The moonlet filled the screen, until it seemed as though they were coming in for a landing on a snowbound arctic plane — except that there was no discernible gravity.
Gently Afra closed with it, guiding the ship in by means of the tiny chemical stabilizer jets set in the sides. Ivo wondered what would happen when they came to rest, since the macroscope housing bulged well beyond the girth of Joseph — then remembered that with so little attraction there would be no particular stress. Actually, they were closer to synchronous orbit than to a “landing,” and it would be wise to tie the ship down.
At fifty miles an hour, relative velocity, they approached, coming up underneath the moonlet; then twenty, and down to five. Schön seemed near enough to touch and the sense of being underneath it had dissolved; it was now like drifting down in a blimp. Finally, at barely one mile an hour, they covered the last few feet and jolted into contact. They were down.
“Let’s stretch our legs,” Groton suggested as the two women came forward. “The recondensing water vapor will anchor the ship as it cools, and that won’t be long at all. We have no responsibilities, for the moment.”
They went out upon the surface, and it was like flying. It was a vacation from reality. The trace vapors generated by the leaking warmth of their suits buoyed them up, away from the cold surface, and they had to use their gas jets to control their motion. A single push, and Ivo sailed along at a ten-foot elevation, feeling both powerful and insecure. To have a physical landscape so close, yet not to be bound by it…
Schön, like Triton, was locked to its primary. They had landed upon the “downward” face, and this accentuated the wrongness. Triton was too big, too close; when they looked at it they seemed to be above it, and when they drifted too high it was like falling, except that they fell, instead, up toward Schön. Was it the stuff of dreams — or of nightmares?
Ivo approached the horizon, and it did not recede from him. He drifted over the edge and had to correct as the “ground” dropped away from him, a new horizon a mile ahead. This really was a flat world; it was possible to fall off the edge, though the fall would be away rather than down. He navigated the intervening mile and found a third horizon, half a mile distant. One more, he thought; one more, then quiet. This experience was tiring.
But, fascinated, he traversed two more — and there was Neptune.
He knew that the ruling planet was no larger than it had appeared from the ship. He reminded himself of that. But then he had been closed in, protected; here he was exposed, and seemingly ready to plunge directly into it. The gaping face of it appalled him, so close, so fierce — the aspect of a physical destroyer. God of the sea — terror of man.
Ivo fired his jet and retreated hastily.
They had to take the ship into space again — a mile or so — to effect the separation of the module; then Afra piloted the chemical craft while Groton brought Joseph back to Schön. Ivo and Beatryx watched the entire maneuver from the landed macroscope housing, and he was not certain which of them was more nervous. An accident, even a slight mishap — and they could be stranded where they were for the duration. Until death did them part — shortly.
There was no accident. They loaded minimum supplies into the module and set off as a group for Triton. Not until the rough landing was over did Ivo allow his mind to function normally again. The experience had frankly terrified him, and he knew that Beatryx had reacted similarly.
Here at last there was gravity. Suited again, they stepped upon their new moon-planet home and looked about.
They were in a valley formed by the curving walls of adjacent craters that were now great mountain ranges jutting to either side. Other ranges were visible in the distance. Not far from their landing spot was an immense crevasse: a geologic fault running between the craters, V-cleft, and filled at the bottom with liquid. The ground surface was packed with dust, somewhat like solid snow, with rocks nudging through it irregularly. Mighty Neptune provided a dim illumination; there was nothing like Earth’s sunlight out here.
“Well, we have our world,” Beatryx said dubiously, after they had returned to the module. “Now what do we do with it?”
“We’ll have to camp in the module until we can construct permanent quarters here,” said Groton thoughtfully. “But before we do that, we’d better survey the area for good locations.”
Afra had stripped off her suit in the pressurized cabin and was wiping the perspiration from her body with an absorbent cloth. Ivo realized that she was nude from the waist up — and further realized that their situation had intensified group interaction to such an extent that he hadn’t even noticed her action until this moment. He suspected that it would be a long time before there was room again for modesty, when cubic yards were all the space available for the four, here. The macroscope had been roomy, compared to the module.
“I’d like first to know how long we’re going to stay,” she said. “Is Schön-person somehow going to find us here, and if so, how soon? No sense building anything fancy if it’s only for a few days.” She had not interrupted her clean-up.
Ivo remembered the breastless carcass he had watched melting, and was tempted to reach out and verify again that what he saw here was real. He refrained.
“Ivo?” Beatryx prompted.
He jumped. “I don’t think Schön is coming. Anything we do, we’ll have to do on our own.”
“Can you find him or can’t you?” Afra demanded, peeling down the nether portion of her suit. “Or contact him. You’ve been more and more mysterious, and there’s still that business about that poet—”
Beatryx interrupted what was threatening to become a tirade. “Afra!”
“But he’s refusing to cooperate! We can’t put up with—”
It was Harold’s turn to interrupt. “If the rest of you will leave off, I will address myself to the problem of Schön. I’ll make a report when I have something to report. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to stop us from setting things up. We’ll need a base of operations regardless of the company. Let’s just do things in an orderly manner and see what develops.”