"Very little." In fact, the frozen air didn't even melt under the pressure of my boots.
"They might be avoiding even that little. Or they might be afraid of your light." He knew I hadn't seen anything; he was looking through a peeper in the top of my helmet.
"Okay, I'll climb that mountain and turn it off for awhile."
I swung my head so he could see the mound I meant, then started up it. It was good exercise, and no strain in the low gravity. I could jump almost as high as on the Moon, without fear of a rock's edge tearing my suit. It was all packed snow, with vacuum between the flakes.
My imagination started working again when I reached the top. There was black all around; the world was black with cold. I turned off the light and the world disappeared.
I pushed a trigger on the side of my helmet and my helmet put the stem of a pipe in my mouth. The air renewer sucked air-and smoke down past my chin. They make wonderful suits nowadays. I sat and smoked, waiting, shivering with the knowledge of the cold. Finally I realized I was sweating. The suit was almost too well insulated.
Our ion drive section came over the horizon, a brilliant star moving very fast, and disappeared as it hit the planet's shadow. Time was passing. The charge, in my pipe burned out and I dumped it.
"Try the light," said Eric.
I got up and turned the headlamp on high. The light spread for a mile around; a white fairy landscape sprang to life, a winter wonderland doubled in spades. I did a slow pirouette, looking, looking... and saw it.
Even this close it looked like a shadow. It also looked like a very flat, monstrously large amoeba, or like a pool of oil running across the ice. Uphill it ran, flowing slowly and painfully up the side of a nitrogen mountain, trying desperately to escape the searing light of my lamp.
"The collector!" Eric demanded. I lifted the collector above my head and aimed it like a telescope at the fleeing enigma, so that Eric could find it in the collectors peeper. The collector spat fire at both ends and jumped up and away. Eric was controlling it now.
After a moment I asked, "Should I come back?"
"Certainly not. Stay there. I can't bring the collector back to the ship! You'll have to wait and carry it back with you.
The pool-shadow slid over the edge of the hill. The flame of the collector's rocket went after it, flying high, growing smaller. It dipped below the ridge. A moment later I heard Eric mutter, "Got it." The bright flame reappeared, rising fast, then curved toward me.
When the thing was hovering near me on two lateral rockets I picked it up by the tail and carried it home.
"No, no trouble," said Eric.
"I just used the scoop to nip a piece out of his flank, if, so I may speak. I got about ten cubic centimeters of strange flesh."
"Good," said I. Carrying the collector carefully in one hand, I went up the landing leg to the airlock. Eric let me in.
I peeled off my frosting suit in the blessed artificial light of ship's day.
"Okay," said Eric.
"Take it up to the lab. And don't touch it."
Eric can be a hell of an annoying character. I've got a brain," I snarled, "even if you can't see it." So can I There was a ringing silence while we each tried to dream up an apology. Eric got there first.
"Sorry," he said.
"Me too." I hauled the collector off to the lab on a cart.
He guided me when I got there.
"Put the whole package in that opening. Jaws first. No, don't close it yet. Turn the thing until these lines match the lines on the collector. Okay. Push it in a little. Now close the door. Okay, Howie, I'll take it from there..." There were chugging sounds from behind the little door.
"Have to wait till the lab's cool enough. Go get some coffee," said Eric.
"I'd better check your maintenance."
"Okay, good. Go oil my prosthetic aids."
"Prosthetic aids"--that was a hot one. I'd thought it up myself. I pushed the coffee button so it would be ready when I was through, then opened the big door in the forward wall of the cabin. Eric looked much like an electrical network, except for the gray mass at the top which was his brain. In all directions from his spinal cord and brain, connected at the walls of the intricately shaped glass-and-soft-plastic vessel which housed him, Eric's nerves reached out to master the ship. The instruments which mastered Eric--but he was sensitive about having it put that way--were banked along both sides of the closet. The blood pump pumped rhythmically, seventy beats a minute.
"How do I look?" Eric asked.
"Beautiful. Are you looking for flattery?"
"Jackass! Am I still alive?"
"The instruments think so. But I'd better lower your fluid temperature a fraction." I did. Ever since we'd landed I'd had a tendency to keep temperatures too high.
"Everything else looks okay. Except your food tank is getting low."
"Well, it'll last the trip."
"Yeah.
'Scuse me. Eric, coffees ready." I went and got it. The only thing I really worry about is his "liver." It's too complicated. It could break down too easily. If it stopped making blood sugar Eric would be dead.
If Eric dies I die, because Eric is the ship. If I die Eric dies, insane, because he can't sleep unless I set his prosthetic aids.
I was finishing my coffee when Eric yelled.
"Hey!"
"What's wrong?" I was ready to run in any direction.
"It's only helium!"
He was astonished and indignant. I relaxed.
"I get it now, Howie. Helium II. That's all our monsters are. Nuts."
Helium II, the superfluid that flows uphill.
"Nuts doubled. Hold everything, Eric. Don't throw away your samples. Check them for contaminants."
