Crashlander

«Nothing.» Morning would be soon enough.

* * *

Morning.

«Elephant, would you do me a favor?»

«Sure. You want Dianna? My right arm? Shave off my beard?»

«I'll keep Sharrol, thanks. Put on your suit, will you?»

«Sure, that makes sense. We aren't nearly uncomfortable enough just because we closed off the bubble.»

«Right. And because I'm a dedicated masochist, I'm going to put my suit on this instant. Now, I hate to enjoy myself alone …»

«You got the wind up?»

«A little. Just enough.»

«Anything for a friend. You go first.»

There was just room to get our suits on one at a time. If the inner air lock door hadn't been open, there wouldn't have been that. We tried leaving our helmets thrown back, but they got in our way against the crash couches. So we taped them to the window in front of us.

I felt better that way, but Elephant clearly thought I'd flipped. «You sure you wouldn't rather eat with your helmet on?»

«I hate suit food syrup. We can reach our helmets if we get a puncture.»

«What puncture? We're in a General Products hull!»

«I keep remembering that the Outsiders knew that.»

«We've been through that.»

«Let's go through it again. Assume they thought we might be killed anyway if we weren't prepared. Then what?»

«Gronk.»

«Either they expected us to go out in suits and get killed, or they know of something that can reach through a General Products hull.»

«Or both. In which case the suits do us no good at all. Bey, do you know how long it's been since a General Products hull failed?»

«I've never heard of it happening at all.»

«It never has. The puppeteers offer an enormous guarantee in case one does. Something in the tens of millions if someone dies as a result.»

«You're dead right. I've been stupid. Go ahead and take off your suit.»

Elephant turned to look at me. «And you?»

«I'll keep mine on. Do you believe in hunches?»

«No.»

«Neither do I. Except just this once.»

Elephant shrugged his shaggy eyebrows and went back to his telescope. By then we were six hours out from the nameless planet and decelerating.

«I think I've found an asteroid crater,» he said presently.

«Let's see.» I had a look. «Yeah, I think you're right. But it's damn near disappeared.»

He took the telescope back. «It's round enough. Almost has to be a crater. Bey, why should it be so eroded?»

«It must be the interstellar dust. If it is, then that's why there's no atmosphere or lithosphere. But I can't see the dust being that thick, even at these speeds.»

«Put it —»

«Yeah.» I reached for my list.

«If we find one more anomaly, I'll scream.»

* * *

Half an hour later we found life.

By then we were close enough to use the gravity drag to slow us. The beautiful thing about a gravity drag is that it uses very little power. It converts a ship's momentum relative to the nearest powerful mass into heat, and all you have to do is get rid of the heat. Since the ST8's hull would pass only various ranges of radiation corresponding to what the puppeteers' varied customers considered visible light, the shipbuilders had run a great big radiator fin out from the gravity drag. It glowed dull red behind us. And the fusion drive was off. There was no white fusion flame to hurt visibility.

Elephant had the scope at highest magnification. At first, as I peered into the eyepiece, I couldn't see what he was talking about. There was a dull white plain, all the same color except for a few blobs of blue. The blobs wouldn't have stood out except for the uniformity of the surface around them.

Then one of them moved. Very slowly, but it was moving.

«Right,» I said. «Let me run a temperature check.»

The surface temperature in that region was about right for helium II. And on the rest of the planet as well; the protosun wasn't putting out much energy, though it was very gung ho on radiation.

«I don't think they match any species I know.»

«I can't tell,» said Elephant. He had the telescope and the library screen going at the same time, with a Sirius VIII blob on the library screen. «There are twenty different species of helium life in this book, and they all look exactly alike.»

«Not quite. They must have a vacuumproof integument. And you'll notice those granules in the —»

«I treasure my ignorance on this subject, Bey. Anyway, we aren't going to find any species we know on this world. Even a stage-tree seed would explode the moment it hit.»

I let the subject die.

Once again Elephant ran the scope over «his» planet, this time looking for the blobby life-forms. They were fairly big for helium II life, but not abnormally so. Lots of cold worlds develop life using the peculiar properties of helium II, but because it hasn't much use for complexity, it usually stays in the amoeba stage.

There was one peculiarity, which I duly noted. Every animal was on the back side of the planet with relation to the planet's course through the galaxy. They weren't afraid of protosun sunlight, but they seemed to fear interstellar dust.

«You promised to scream.»

«It's not odd enough. I'll wait.»

Two hours passed.