“Quite a haul back to base,” said Wofforth, almost cheerfully. His eyes were bright, as though he savored the idea. “About halfway around Pluto. We’d better start now, or they’ll get tired of waiting.”
“They’ve gone, sir,” Corbett growled before Jenks could gesture him to silence. He was beefy, slit-eyed. “We saw the jets going sunward this morning.”
Wofforth winced. “Gone,” he said. “That’s right. I didn’t stop to think. You said forty hours. … They couldn’t wait that long. We’re past opposition already, getting farther away all the time. They had to go, or they wouldn’t have made it.”
He stood up uncertainly and reached for his ripped tunic. Corbett stepped over and helped him slide his uninjured arm into the right sleeve, then to fasten and drape the tunic over his splinted left arm and shoulder.
“We’ll just have to get back to Base Camp and wait,” said Wofforth grimly.
“Sir,” said Jenks, “our radio is gone. I tried to patch it up, but it was gone. When they didn’t get a signal, they must have thought—”
“Nonsense!” Wofforth broke in. “They’ll have left us supplies. They couldn’t wait, signal or none. Our job is to get back, and stick it out there until they come for us.”
He sat at the control and began to write in the log book. Corbett and Jenks drifted together at the other end of the room.
“You meat-head,” snarled Jenks under his breath. “You knew he took the berth to Pluto because the first mate was a lady—Lya Stromminger.”
“He had to know they were gone,” protested Corbett, equally fierce.
“Not flat like you gave it. He came here to be with her. Now she’s jetted away without him. How does a man feel when a woman’s done that—”
“Stop blathering, you two, and help me into my suit,” called Wofforth, rising again. “We’re going to rev up that sled engine and get out of here!”
Outside, the sled lay ready under the frigid sky. Wofforth tramped around it, leaned over and poked the load.
“Too much,” said his voice in their radios. “Keep the synthesizer, the tent, these two ration boxes. Wait, keep the crowbar and the hatchet. Dump the rest.”
“We travel that light, sir?” said Jenks doubtfully.
“I’ve been figuring,” said Wofforth. “We’re on the far side of Pluto from Base Camp. That makes ten thousand miles, more or less. Pluto’s day is nineteen hours and a minute or so, Earth time. We can travel only by what they humorously call daylight. And we’d better get there in ten days—a thousand miles every nine and a half hours—or maybe we won’t get there at all.”
“How’s that, sir?” asked Corbett.
“The heaters in these suits,” Wofforth reminded him. “Two hundred and forty hours of efficiency, and that’s all. Well, it’s noon. Let’s take off.”
His voice shook. He was still weak. Jenks helped him sit on the two lashed ration boxes, and slung a mooring strap across his knees. Then Jenks took the steering boom, and Corbett bent to start the engine.
When the arclight sun set in the west, they had traveled more than four hours over country not too rugged to slow them much. Darkness closed in fast while Jenks and Corbett pitched the pyramidal tent of metal foil and clamped it down solidly. They spread and zipped in the ground fabric, set up lights and heater inside, and began to pipe in thawed gases from the drifts outside.
After their scanty meal, Corbett and Jenks sought their bedstrips, on opposite sides of the tent. Wofforth tended the atomic heater for minutes, until the sound of deep breathing told him that his companions were asleep.
Then he put on his spacesuit, clumsy with his single hand to close seams. He picked up sextant and telescope, and slipped out into the Plutonian night.
It was as utterly black as the bottom of a pond of ink. But above Wofforth shone the faithful stars, in the constellations mapped by the first stargazers of long ago. He made observations, checked for time and position. He chuckled inside his helmet, as though congratulating himself. Back in the tent, he opened the log book and wrote:
First day: Course due west. Run 410 mi. To go 9,590 mi. approx. Supplies adeq. Spirits good.
Wriggling out of his space gear, he lay down, asleep almost before his weary limbs relaxed.
Everyone was awake before dawn. They made coffee on the heater, and broke out protein biscuits for breakfast.
As the tiny sun winked into view over the horizon, they loaded the sled. Corbett slouched toward the idling engine at the tail of the sled.
“No, get on amidships,” said Wofforth. “I’ll take over engine.”
“My job—” began Corbett.
“You’re relieved. Strap yourself on the ration boxes. That’s right. Jenks, steer again. Make for the level ahead.”
With his right hand Wofforth ran a length of pliable cable around his waist and through a ring-bolt on the decking. He touched the engine controls, and they pulled away from camp.
The sled coursed over great knoll-like swellings of the terrain, coated with the dull-pale frozen atmosphere. Beyond, it gained speed on a vast flat plain, almost as smooth as a desert of glass.
“What’s this big rink. Lieutenant?” asked Jenks.
“Maybe a sea, or maybe just a sunken area, full of solid gases. Stand by the helm, I’m going to gun a few more M.P.H. out of her.”
“No wind,” grunted Corbett. “Nothing moving except us. The floor of hell.”
“If you was in hell, the rest of us would be better off,” said Jenks sourly.
Wofforth began to sing, though he did not feel like it:
Trim your nails and scrape your face,
They’re all on the Other Side of space!
Tokyo—Baltimore, Maryland—
Hong Kong—Paris—Samarkand—
Tokyo—London—Troy—Fort Worth—
The happy towns of the Planet Earth …
At camp that night he wrote in the log book:
Second Day: Course due west. Run 1,014 mi. To go 8,576 mi. approx. Supplies adeq. Spirits fair. …
“What’s for supper?” bawled Corbett, entering. “I could eat
