Iris

wrapping him in an elastic pressure bandage. The hood inflated into a hard, spherical bubble.

The mirror now showed him thin, clad in form-fitting scarlet, an archetypal spaceman. Lifesystems was a small cylinder on one hip, containing a thermal regulator and an oxygen reserve held in a Hyloxso-like matrix sufficient for a ten-hour stay outside. Krzakwa had explained that it even contained a powerful gyro platform. It was a marvel of miniaturization beyond his powers of imagination, but it worked. There had been much discussion about the difficulties imposed by an environment that averaged only 25 degrees Kelvin during the daytime, but Tem had quickly dispelled their fears with a lecture on the subject. The problem was not one of dissipating heat, as was the case in the inner Solar System, but of maintaining a core of 40 degrees C simultaneously with a suit exterior temperature that retained full flexibility. Less than 450 kcal/hr was required, easily generated by the suit's sophisticated six-phase battery. Standing on the surface, with both feet in contact with the ice, added only another 10 kcal/hr or so to the total. Even though he admitted that lying down on the surface for long periods might not be wise, it took Krzakwa awhile to convince the less scientific members of the crew that 'common-sense' notions of thermodynamics were useless.

'This is John. Do you read me?'

Prynne said, 'Yes. Go on out. We're all waiting.'

The privilege of being first out had gone to John by virtue of his titular leadership and the others'

insistence. John sent a command to Shipnet and the air whispered out through a valve. When it was gone, things looked no different, but he knew that he was in a lethal environment. He shivered. Another thought brought the hatch to life, and it irised open to show him the ruler-straight edge between dim gray ice and starry night. On the girders framing the airlock there was a fine white dust. The exhaust air had frozen. OK, he thought. So it's that cold.

Sixty meters separated him from the ground, and for a moment he considered jumping. His calculator mused: With a surface gravity of 0.027g, he would land with approximately the force of a five-foot fall on Earth. That might hurt, and he certainly wouldn't be able to jump back up. . . .

'Hey. How am I supposed to get down?' he asked. Insofar as he had been part of the design team for Deepstar, this was one consideration that he'd never heard mentioned. There were handholds studding the ion drive unit, and, if it came to that, they would have to do. It all seemed dangerous. Ariane's voice was in his head. 'Sorry. There's a catwalk on the vertex of the frame between the Hyloxso matrix and one of the water tanks. It leads as far as the engine-mountstructure. From there, you can either climb down a landing strut or jump.'

He put a hand on the edge of the hatch and stepped out on the thick metal meshwork that formed the collar holding the CM in place, then looked down. This is foolish, he thought. I'm acting like this is Earth. Even if I fall, there won't be any damage. I could even land on my head! The helmet would protect me. The words rang hollow. It still looked like a deadly sixty-meter drop.

He stepped down, feeling for a foothold, and descended. Finally he came to the complex quadrigram that bound together the far end of the craft. From there it was a matter of leaping the remaining ten meters, which he did. The fall took a perceptibly long time and resulted in only a modest jar. When his feet touched the ice he felt his skin grow warm as the suit's thermostasis system came on. A shimmering, half-seen mist appeared for a moment around his feet, then instantly dissipated, carrying with it some residual heat that Deepstar's structure had radiated onto his exterior. Concentrating on the actual process of getting down, he had forgotten about the ceremony of arrival on this alien world, of being the first man to set foot on what was, in effect, a planet of another solar system. Whatever possible dignity or formality the moment called for was gone. The words he'd used to begin Triton came into his mind, and he spoke them:

When the worlds, too few, have been walked; When the outcome is written on the walls of the wind; Come with me, leave the net . . .

We'll begin again.

Smelling the soft tang of his sweat, he flexed the material of a glove and rubbed his thumb against his fingertips. Though the increased girth of his hand felt clumsy, feeling was hardly impaired at all. It took an effort of will to come to grips with the intensely different conditions that that thin barrier separated. The material of his bubble helmet was nohindrance at all to seeing. The enormity of the world, even with Ocypete's close horizon, filled him.

The surface of the ocellus was more pristine and flat than he could have imagined. The ice was a dim, white sheet, like linen, stretching out in a wrinkleless vista. Triton would have been nothing like this.

'John? Here's something peculiar for you.' Ariane's voice interrupted his meditations. The 3V image of a strange bluish blanket retreating appeared, almost like an ocean breaker in reverse, perhaps a meter deep. The trailing edge of the blanket crumpled and shrank in on itself in a fast rush of sublimation, leaving flat ice, like that on which he stood.

Hu's voice accompanied the vision. 'That, John, is the retreat of the regolith; mostly neon but some deuterium as well. Trace amounts of methane, CO, and argon are being left behind. The driving force was our infrared output. It should stop well beyond the horizon, maybe half a myriameter from here. The neon was very close to its sublimation point even before we landed.' Harmon said, 'I guess that's a good indication of what would've happened if we'd tried to land in the highlands.'

Cornwell was struck by a sense of amazement. Of such insubstantial stuff was this world made! He looked up and traced a few constellations in the sky, almost hidden in the thousands of dimmer stars not visible from the surface of Earth. Draco, Cassiopeia, the Great Bear; they were still there, friends that he'd made in childhood. He felt his composure returning. There was some continuity, after all. Iris hung some fifty