"I'll use the other." Another lurch as we dropped the dead one. The ship flew on like a wounded penguin, but still accelerating. One minute... two... The other ram quit. It was as if we'd run into molasses. Eric blew off the ram and the pressure eased. I could talk.
"Eric."
"What?"
"Got any marshmallows?"
"What? Oh, I see. Is your suit tight?"
"Sure."
"Live with it. We'll flush the smoke out later. I'm going to coast above some of this stuff, but when I use the rocket it'll be savage. No mercy."
"Will we make it?"
"I think so. It'll be close."
The relief came first, icy cold. Then the anger.
"No more inexplicable numbnesses?" I asked.
"No. Why?"
"If any come up you'll be sure and tell me, won't you?"
"Are you getting at something?"
"Skip it." I wasn't angry any more.
"I'll be damned if I do. You know perfectly well it was mechanical trouble, you fool. You fixed it yourself!"
"No. I convinced you I must have fixed it. You needed to believe the rams should be working again. I gave you a miracle cure, Eric. I just hope I don't have to keep dreaming up new placebos for you all the way home."
"You thought that, but you went out on the wing sixteen miles up?" Eric's machinery snorted.
"You've got guts where you need brains, Shorty."
I didn't answer.
"Five thousand says the trouble was mechanical. We let the mechanics decide after we land."
"You're on."
"Here comes the rocket. Two, one" It came, pushing me down into my metal suit. Sooty flames licked past my ears, writing black on the green metal ceiling, but the rosy mist before my eyes was not fire.
The man with the thick glasses spread a diagram of the Venus ship and jabbed a stubby finger at the trailing edge of the wing.
"Right around here," he said.
"The pressure from outside compressed the wiring channel a little, just enough so there was no room for the wire to bend. It had to act as if it were rigid, see? Then when the heat expanded the metal these contacts pushed past each other."
"I suppose it's the same design on both wings?"
He gave me a queer look.
"Well, naturally."
I left my check for $5000 in a pile of Eric's mail and hopped a plane for Brasilia. How he found me I'll never know, but the telegram arrived this morning.
HOWIE COME HOME ALL IS FORGIVEN
DONOVANS BRAIN
I guess I'll have to.
Wait It Out
NIGHT ON PLUTO. Sharp and distinct, the horizon line cuts across my field of vision. Below that broken line is the dim gray-white of snow seen by starlight. Above, space-blackness and space-bright stars. From behind a jagged row of frozen mountains the stars pour up in singletons and clusters and streamers of cold white dots. Slowly they move, but visibly, just fast enough for a steady eye to capture their motion.
Something wrong there. Pluto's rotation period is long: 6.39 days. Time must have slowed for me.
It should have stopped.
I wonder if I may have made a mistake.
The planet's small size brings the horizon close. It seems even closer without a haze of atmosphere to fog the distances. Two sharp peaks protrude into the star swarm like the filed front teeth of a cannibal warrior. In the cleft between those peaks shines a sudden bright point.
I recognize the Sun, though it shows no more disk than any other, dimmer star. The sun shines as a cold point between the frozen peaks; it pulls free of the rocks and shines in my eyes...
The Sun is gone, the star field has shifted. I must have passed out.
It figures.
