occurred to you that we may need the disintegrator to dig up the spacesuit?'
'Yeah, it has. That's why I didn't use it any longer than I did.' In fact he'd quit because he was tired, but he knew Kzanol was right. Twenty-five minutes of a most continuous operation was a heavy drain on the battery. 'I thought I could do them some damage. I don't know whether I did or not.'
'Will you relax? If they get too close I'll take them get us some extra ships and body servants.'
'I'm sure of that. But they don't have to get that close.'
The gap between the Golden Circle and the Belt fleet closed slowly. They would reach Pluto at about the same time, eleven days after the honeymooner left Neptune.
'There she goes,' said somebody.
'Right,' said Lew. 'Everyone ready to fire?'
Nobody answered. The flame of the honeymooner's drive stretched miles into space, a long, thin line of bluish white in a faint conical envelope. Slowly it began contract.
'Fire,' said Lew, and pushed a red button. It had a tiny protective hatch over it, now unlocked. With a key.
Five missiles streaked away, dwindling match flames. The honeymooner's fire had contracted to a point.
Minutes passed. An hour. Two.
The radio beeped. 'Garner calling. You haven't called. Hasn't anything happened yet?'
'No,' said Lew into the separate maser mike. 'They should have hit by now.'
Minutes dragging by. The white star of the honeymoon special burned serenely.
'Then something's wrong.' Garner's voice had crossed the light-minutes between him and the fleet. 'Maybe the disintegrator burned off the radar antennae on your missiles.'
'Son of a bitch! Sure, that's exactly what happened. Now what?'
Minutes.
'Our missiles are okay. If we can get close enough we can use them. But that gives them three days to find the Amplifier. Can you think of a way to hold them off for three days?'
'Yeah.' Lew was grim. 'I've an idea they won't be landing on Pluto.' He gnawed his lip, wondering if he could avoid giving Garner this information. Well, it wasn't exactly top secret, and the Arm would probably find out anyway. 'The Belt has made trips to Pluto, but we ever tried to land there. Not after the first ship took a close-up spectroscopic reading…'
They played at a table just outside the pilot room door. Kzanol/Greenberg had insisted. He played with one ear cocked at the radio. Which was all right with Kzanol, since it affected the other's playing.
Garner's voice came, scratchy and slightly distorted, after minutes of silence. 'It sounds to me as if it all depends on where they land. We can't control that. We'd better think of something else, just in case. What have you got besides missiles?'
The radio buzzed gently with star static.
'I wish we could hear both sides,' Kzanol growled. 'Can you make any sense of that?'
Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head. 'We won't, either. They must know we're in Garner's maser beam. But it sounds like they know something we don't.'
'Four.'
'I'm taking two. Anyway, it's nice to know they can't shoot at us.'
'Yes. Well done.' Kzanol spoke with absent-minded authority, using the conventional overspeak phrase to congratulate a slave who shows proper initiative. His eye was on his cards. He never saw the killing rage in his partner's face. He never sensed the battle that raged across the table, as Kzanol/Greenberg's intelligence fought his fury until it turned cold. Kzanol might have died that day, howling as the disintegrator stripped away suit and skin and muscle, without ever knowing why.
Ten days, twenty-one hours since takeoff. The icy planet hung overhead, huge and dirty white, with the glaring highlight which had fooled early astronomers. From Earth, only that bright highlight is visible, actually evidence of Pluto's flat, almost polished surface, making the planet look very small and very dense.
'Pretty puny,' said Kzanol.
'What did you expect of a moon?'
'There was F-28. Too heavy even for whitefoods.'
'True. Mmph. Look at that big circle. Looks like a tremendous meteor crater, doesn't it?'
'Where? Oh, I see it.' Kzanol listened. 'That's it! Radar's got it cold. Powerloss,' he added, looking at the radar telescope through the pilot's eyes, 'you can almost see the shape of it. But we'll have to wait for the next circuit before we can land.'
Slowly the big ship turned until its motor faced forward in its orbit.
The Belt fleet stayed a respectful distance away- very respectful, four million miles respectful. Without the telescopes Pluto barely showed a disc.
'Everybody guess a number,' said Lew. 'Between one and one hundred. When I get yours I'll tell you mine. Then we call Garner and let him pick. Whoever gets closest to Garner's number is It.'
'Three.' 'Twenty-eight.' 'Seventy.'
'Fifty. Okay, I'll call Garner.' Lew changed to maser. 'One calling Garner. One calling Garner. Garner, we've about decided what to do if he doesn't go down. None of our ship radars are damaged, so we'll just program one ship to aim at the honeymooner at top speed. We watch through the telescopes. When our ship gets close enough we blow the drive. We want you to pick a number between one and one hundred.'
Seconds passing. Garner's fleet was closer now, nearing the end of its trip.
'This is Tartov in Number Three. He's going down.'
'Garner here. I suggest we wait and use the radar proof, if we can. It sounds like you're planning for one man to ride in somebody's airlock until he can reach to Belt. If so, wait for us; we may have room for an extra in one of the Earth ships. You still want a number? Fifty-five.'
Lew swallowed. 'Thanks, Garner.' He turned off his maser-finder.
'Three again. You're saved by the bell, Lew. He's going down on the night side. In the predawn area. Couldn't be better. He may even land in the Crescent!'
Lew watched, his face pale, as the tiny light burned above Pluto's dim white surface. Garner must have forgotten that a singleship's control bubble was its own airlock; that it had to be evacuated whenever the pilot wanted to get out. Lew was glad the flatlander fleet had followed. He did not relish the idea of spending several weeks riding on the outside of a spaceship.
Kzanol/Greenberg swallowed, swallowed again. The low acceleration bothered him. He blamed it on his human body. He sat in a window seat with the crash web tightly fastened, looking out and down.
There was little to see. The ship had circled half the world, falling ever tower, but the only feature on an unchanging cue-bali surface had been the slow creep of the planetary shadow. Now the ship flew over the night side, and the only light was the dim light of the drive- dim at least when reflected from this height. And there was nothing to see at all… until now.
Something was rising on the eastern horizon, something a shade lighter than the black plain. An irregular line against the stars. Kzanol/Greenberg leaned forward as he began to realize just how big the range was, for it couldn't be anything but a mountain range. 'What's that?' he wondered aloud.
'One hundredth diltun.' Kzanol probed the pilot's mind. The pilot said, 'Cott's Crescent. Frozen hydrogen piled up along the dawn side of the planet. As it rotates into daylight the hydrogen boils off and then refreezes on the night side. Eventually it rotates back to here.'
'Oh. Thanks.'
Evanescent mountains of hydrogen snow, smooth and low, like a tray of differently sized snowballs dropped from a height. They rose gently before the slowing ship, rank behind rank, showing the tremendous breadth of the range. But they couldn't show its length. Kzanol/Greenberg could see only that the mountains stretched half around the horizon; but he could imagine them marching from pole to pole around the curve of the world. As they must.
