vast marsh of ancient, partially healed wounds in a circular shield of chemical ice. They lay shoulder to shoulder, overlapping, defacing one another, craters within craters like beer-glass rings on a veined marble bar. If there had been other processes involved in the making of this surface, they had left no evidence.
'This is the leading hemisphere,' said Jana, 'long gardened by impacts and mantled with the former atmosphere.'
Demogorgon looked out on Iris III from fathomless dark eyes and thought, Is this a land for mystic adventure? No . . . yes. He didn't know, but it did have a deadly sameness about it that disturbed him. Was this all there was?
As if to answer his unspoken question, he noticed a bright, crack-reticulated bulge creeping over the eastern limb. Perhaps there will be something, he thought.
The bright cracks gave way to a darker, smoother terrain that came creeping over the edge of Ocypete. Somewhat broken and jumbled, it was essentially crater free. As they watched, this morphology grew more uniform, a vast, flat plain, and they could see the edges of it curving back to form the great basin that dominated the little moon's surface.
'Mare Nostrum,' murmured Demogorgon. 'Like the sunrise.'
'And so you've named our new home,' said Beth.
Jana said, 'The official policy is that we must submit names for the most prominent features. If you prefer, I will name the rest....'
'This place would be a lot of fun if you could get into pill-mixers' Latin,' said Prynne.
'Or if you were one of those demented nomenclature addicts,' said Jana. 'Do you know there are over four million named features in the Solar System? And that's not counting Earth. It's become an onerous task.'
'If you want,' said Demogorgon, looking intently at her, 'I've developed several self-consistent mythologies for my Illimitor art. You're welcome to use them.'
Jana's gaze shifted back to Ocypete. 'It's an idea.'
Brendan sighed and stretched, rubbing his eyes. 'Come on, shitheads, it's time. Let's get down there.' Krzakwa grinned. ' 'Shitheads,' he says . . . you want to fly this monster or shall I?'
'Yeah,' said Sealock. 'Bend over, Tem. I'll drive you home.' They plugged into Shipnet and were gone.
In a little while, no more than a hundred minutes, they were in a perfectly circular orbit some ten kilometers above the fast-moving craterscape. Great broken features, too complex to absorb fully, slid past quickly, frictionlessly, and the clear wall again drew spectators. Suddenly the fretted terrain that surrounded the water ocellus broke into their view, and then the giant basin swept under them like a convex serving dish, featureless save for a few wandering rilles. After a few more moments Jana pointed out shadows on the mare. Someone called up a higher gain on the window optics and a cluster of translucent, dark-nippled cones filled the view.
'They look like half-melted volcanoes,' said Vana.
Hu called for a still closer view, with definition precise enough to see the summit openings for what they were. She stared in silence, then said, 'Not impossible. Once the meltwater in the ocellus crusted over, the sea below could have behaved as a magma source, though erupting liquid water, even at these temperatures, is too thin to pile up into domes. More likely some kind of slurry extrusion.' Deepstardropped out of the black sky on a downward-pointing fountain of pale yellow fire. It followed a long arc of lessening transverse motion and, when the last of it was gone, went high-gate, slipping vertically toward the smooth, shining ice of the bright mare basin. In the end the ship hovered a thousand meters above the surface, just for a moment, then the Hyloxso engines shut down and the fire was replaced by a much cooler jet of hydrogen. They descended further.
There was still too much heat to be trusted. At one hundred meters the throttle valves closed entirely, and they fell.
The gravity gradient of this small world was insignificant, but inertia made a display of the impact nonetheless. The ship bounced high, more than double its own length, kept erect by its gyros and the intermittent thud of RCS thrusters. It floated down, rebounded once more, and finally came to rest on the ice. It teetered just a bit on its splay of strut-legs and then was still. To those within, pinioned to the soft plastic floor of the common room by their em-suits, their arrival on Ocypete came with a noise like a small car being eaten by a train. After the second jolt, all was silent save for the faint pings of stressed metal resuming its shape in the crystalline latticework.
'Son of a bitch,' said Cornwell, 'we're here.'
Sealock popped the plugs from his head and said, 'No shit.' They went to the window and looked out.
TWO
John Cornwell stood in the airlock and suited up. He pulled on the baggy red coverall and crimped shut the helmet, now a floppy, transparent hood. Checking himself in the safety mirror, he had to laugh. He looked like an anorexic Santa Claus. He touched a control node at his waist, and the fabric leaped up against his skin, shrink-
