"Hm-m-m." Maclaren rubbed his chin. His eyes flickered between the other two faces. "It shouldn't be hard to fix those rocket motors in place, as you say. But a tripod more than a hundred meters long, for a thing as ma.s.sive as this ship-I don't know. If nothing else, how about the servos for it?"

"Please." Nakamura waved his words aside. "I realize we have not time to do this properly. My plan does not envision anything with self-adjusting legs. A simple, rigid structure must suffice. We can use the radar to select a nearly level landing place."

"All places are, down there," said Maclaren. "That iron was boiling once, and nothing has weathered it since. Of course, there are doubtless minor irregularities, which would topple us on our tripod-with a thousand tons of ma.s.s to hit the ground!"

Nakamura's eyes drooped. "It will be necessary for me to react quickly," he said. "That is the risk we take."

WHEN the ship was prepared, they met once on the obser-vation deck, to put on their s.p.a.cesuits. The hull might be cracked in landing. Maclaren and Ryerson would be down at the engine controls, Nakamura in the pilot's turret, strapped into acceleration harness with only their hands left free.

Nakamura's gaze sought Maclaren's. "We may not meet again," he said.

"Possible," said Maclaren.

The small, compact body held steady, but Nakamura's face thawed. He had suddenly, after all the time which was gone, taken on an expression; and it was gentle.

"Since this may be my last chance," he said, "I would like to thank you."

"Whatever for?"

"I am not afraid any more."

"Don't thank me," said Maclaren, embarra.s.sed. "Something like that, a chap does for himself, y' know."

"You earned me the time for it, at least." Nakamura made a weightless bow."Sensei, give me your blessing."

Maclaren said, with a degree of bewilderment: "Look here, everybody else has had more skill, contributed more, than I. I've told you a few things about the star and the planet, but you-Dave, at least-could have figured it out with slightly more difficulty. I'd never have known how to reconstruct a drive or a web, though; and I'd never be able to land this ship."

"I was not speaking of material survival," said Nakamura. A smile played over his mouth. "Still, do you remember how disorganized and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to usetheir arts." Then, seriously: "The next stage of achievement, though, lies within a man. You have taught me.

Knowingly or not, Terangi-san, you have taught me. I would give much to be sure you will . . . have the chance . . . to teach yourself."

Ryerson appeared from the lockers. "Here they are," he said. "Tin suits all around."

Maclaren donned his armor and went aft.I wonder how much Seiichi knows. Does he know that I've stopped making a fuss about things, that I didn't exult when we found this planet, not from stoicism but merely because I have been afraid to hope?

I wouldn't even know what to hope for. All this struggle, just to get back to Earth and resume having fun? No, that's too grotesque.

"We should have issued the day's chow before going down," said Ryerson. "Might not be in any shape to eat it at the other end."

"Who's got an appet.i.te under present circ.u.mstances?" said Maclaren. "So postponing dinner is one way of stretching out the rations a few more hours."

"Seventeen days' worth, now."

"We can keep going, foodless, for a while longer."

"We'll have to," said Ryerson. He wet his lips. "We won't mine our metal, and gasify it, and separate out the fractional per cent of germanium, and make those transistors, and tune the circuits, in any seventeen days."

Maclaren grimaced. "Starvation, or the canned w.i.l.l.y we've been afflicted with. Frankly, I don't think there's much differ-ence."

Hastily, he grinned at Ryerson, so the boy would know it for a jest. Grumbling was not allowed any more; they didn't dare. And the positive side of conversation, the dreaming aloud of "when we get home,"

had long since worn thin. Dinner-table conversation had been a ritual they needed for a while, but in a sense they had outgrown it. Now a man was driven into his own soul.And that's what Seiichi meant, thought Maclaren.Only, I haven't found anything in myself Or, no. I have. But I don't know what.

It's too dark to see.

He strapped himself in and began checking instruments.

"Pilot to engine room. Read off!"

"Engine room to pilot. Plus voltage clear. Minus voltage clear. Mercury flow standard-"

The ship came to life.

And she moved down. Her blast slowed her in orbit, she spiraled, a featureless planet of black steel called her to itself. The path was cautious. There must be allowance for rotation; there must not be too quick a change of velocity, lest the pon-derous sphere go wobbling out of control. Again and again the auxiliary motors blasted, spinning her, guiding her. The ion-drive was not loud, but the rockets roared on the hull like hammers.

And down. And down.

Only afterward, reconstructing confused memories, did Maclaren know what had happened; and he was never alto-gether sure. TheCross backed onto an iron plain. Her tripod touched, on one foot, on two.

The surface was not quite level. She began to topple. Nakamura lifted her with a skill that blended main drive and auxiliaries into one smooth surge- such skill as only an utterly relaxed man could achieve, re-sponding to the immense shifting forces as a part thereof. He rose a few hundred meters, changed position relative to the ground, and tried again. The tripod struck on two points once more. The ship toppled again. The third leg went off a small bluff, no more than a congealed ripple in the iron. It hit ground hard enough to buckle.

Nakamura raised ship barely in time. For an instant he poised in the sky on a single leg of flame, keeping his balance with snorts of rocket thrust. The bottom of theCross' stern a.s.sembly was not many meters above ground.

Suddenly he killed the ion drive. Even as the ship fell, he spun her clear around on the rotator jets. The Cross struck nose first. The pilot's turret smashed, the bow caved in, auto-matic bulkheads slammed shut to save the air that whistled out. That was a great ma.s.s, and it struck hard. The sphere was crushed flat for meters aft of the bow. With her drive and her unharmed transceiver web aimed at the sky, the ship rested like Columbus' egg.

And the stars glittered down upon her.

Afterward Maclaren wondered: Nakamura might well have decided days beforehand that he would probably never be able to land any other way. Or he might have considered that his rations would last two men an extra week. Or perhaps, simply, he found his dark bride.

THE planet spun quickly about its axis, once in less than ten hours. There went never a day across its iron plains, but hunger and the stars counted time. There was no wind, no rain, no sea, but a man's radio hissed with the thin dry talk of the stars.

When he stood at the pit's edge and looked upward, Mac-laren saw the sky sharp and black and of an absolute cold. It had a somehow three-dimensional effect; theory said all those crowding suns, blue-white or frosty gold or pale heartless red, were alike at optical infinity, but the mind sensed remoteness beyond remoteness, and whimpered. Nor was the ground un-derfoot a comfort, for it was almost as dark, starlit vision reached a few meters and was gulped down. A chopped-off Milky Way and a rising constellation-the one Maclaren had privately named Risus, the Sneer-told him that a horizon existed, but his animal instincts did not believe it.

He sighed, slapped a glare filter across his faceplate, and began cutting. The atomic hydrogen torch was lurid enough to look upon, but it jostled the stars out of his eyes. He cut rap-idly, ten-kilo slabs which he kicked down into the pit so they wouldn't fuse tight again. The hole itself had originally been blasted, but theCross didn't carry enough explosive for him to mine all his ore that way.

Ore, he reflected, was a joke. How would two men on foot prospect a sterilized world sealed into vacuum a hundred mil-lion years ago? And there would have been little point in it. This planet had boiled once, at least on the surface; and even the metallic core had been heated and churned, quite probably to melting, when crushed atoms expanded to normal dimen-sions. The entire globe must be nearly uniform, a one alloy lump. You took any piece, crushed it, gasified it, ionized it, put it through the electromagnetic isotope separator, and drew forth as much-or, rather, as minutely little-germanium as any other piece would have given you. From the known rate of extraction by such methods you could calculate when you would have four kilograms. The date lay weeks away.

Maclaren finished cutting, shut off his torch and hung it on its generator, and climbed into the bucket of the crane at the pit's edge. His flash-beam threw puddles of light on its walls as he was lowered. At the bottom he moved painfully about, loaded the bucket, and rode back to the surface. A small elec-tric truck waited, he spilled the bucket into its box. And then it was to do again, and still again, until he had a full load.

Thank G.o.d and her dead designers, theCross was well equipped for work on airless surfaces, she carried machines to dig and build and transport. But, of course, she had to. It was her main purpose, to establish a new transceiver station on a new moon; everything else could then come straight from the Solar System.

It had been her purpose.

It still was.

Maclaren climbed wearily onto the truck seat. He and his s.p.a.cesuit had a fourth again their Earth-weight here. His headlights picked out a line of paint leading toward the ship. It had been necessary to blast the pit some distance away, for fear of what ground vibrations might do to the web or the isotope separator.

But then a trail had to be blazed, for nature had given no landmarks for guide, this ground was as bare as a skull.

Existence was like lead in Maclaren's bones.

After a while he made out theCross, a flattened sphere crowned with a skeleton and the Orion nebula. It was no fun having everything upside down within her; a whole day had gone merely to reinstall the essential items. Well, Seiichi, you did what seemed best, and your broken body lies honored with Chang Sverdlov's, on the wide plains of iron.

Floodlights glared under the ship. Ryerson was just finish-ing the previous load, reducing stone to pebbles and thence to dust. Good timing. Maclaren halted his truck and climbed down. Ryerson turned toward him. The undiffused glow reached through his faceplate and picked a sunken, bearded face out of night, little more than nose and cheekbone and bristling jaw. In his unhuman armor, beneath that cavernous sky, he might have been a troll.Or I might, thought Maclaren.Humanity is far from us. We have stopped bathing, shaving, dressing, cooking . . .pretending; we work till our brains go blank, and then work some more, and crawl up the ladder into the ship for a few hours' uneasy sleep, and are awakened by the clock, and fool our shriveled bellies with a liter of tea, and put a lump of food in our mouths and go out. For our time has grown thin.

"h.e.l.lo, Nibelung," said Ryerson.

Maclaren started. "Are you getting to be a telepath?"

"It's possible," said Ryerson. His voice had become a harsh whisper. His glance searched darkness.

"Anything is possible here."

"After we put this load through," said Maclaren, evading the other thought, "we'd better move the slag out of the ship. That ninety-nine-plus per cent of material we don't use piles up fast."

Ryerson clumped heavily to the truck and began unloading. "And then out once more, cutting and loading and grinding and . . . merciful G.o.d, but I'm tired! Do you really imagine we can keep on doing heavy manual work like this, after the last food has been eaten?"

"We'll have to," said Maclaren. "And, of course, there is al-ways-" He picked up a rock. Dizziness whirled through him. He dropped the stone and sank to his knees on the ground.

"Terangi!" Ryerson's voice seemed to come from some Del-phic deep, through mists. "Terangi, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," mumbled Maclaren. He pushed at the other man's groping arms. "Lea' me be . . . all right in a min-ute . . ." He relaxed against the stiffness of armor and let his weakness go through him in tides.

After a while, some strength returned. He looked up. Ryer-son was just feeding the last rocks into the crusher. The ma-chine ate them with a growl that Maclaren felt through the planet and his body. It vibrated his teeth together.

"I'm sorry, Dave," he said.

"'S all right. You should go up and bunk for a while."

"Just a spell. Maybe we shouldn't have cut our rations as short as we have."

"You do seem to've been losing weight even faster than me," said Ryerson. "Maybe you ought to have an extra ration."

"Nah. It's metabolic inefficiency, brought on by well-spent years of wine, women, and off-key song."

Ryerson sat down beside him. "I'm a bit short of breath myself. Let's both take a break while the stuff goes through the crusher."

"Well," said Maclaren, "if your tailbone insulators can stand it, I suppose mine can."

THEY remained in silence for a while. The machine rum-bled in their flesh and the stars muttered in their heads.

"How long do you think it will take to prepare the web?" asked Maclaren. "I mean, what's your latest estimate?"

"Hitherto I've underestimated the time for everything," said Ryerson. "Now, I just don't know. First we'll have to get our germanium. Then, to make the units . . . I don't know. Two weeks, three? And then, once all the circuits are functioning, they'll have to be tuned. Mostly by guesswork, since I don't really know the critical constants. That will takex time, de-pending on how lucky we are."

"We'll open the last can of food soon," said Maclaren. In itself it was a totally useless reminder, but it was leading up to something they had both avoided.

Ryerson continued to squirm: "They say tobacco helps kill appet.i.te."

"It does," said Maclaren, "but I smoked the last b.u.t.ts months ago. Now I've even lost the addiction.

Though of course I'll happily rebuild same the moment we strike Earth."

"When we come home-" Ryerson's voice drifted off like a murmur in sleep. "We haven't talked about our plans for a long time."

"It got to be too predictable, what every man would say."

"Yes. But is it now? I mean, do you still want to take that sailboat cruise around Earth, with . . . er . . . a female crew and a cargo of champagne?"

"I don't know," said Maclaren, faintly surprised to realize it. "I hadn't thought-Do you remember once in s.p.a.ce, we talked about our respective sailing experiences, and you told me the sea is the most inhuman thing on our planet?"

"Hm-m-m-yes. Of course, my sea was the North Atlantic. You might have had different impressions."

"I did. Still, Dave, it has stuck in my mind, and I see now you are right. Any ocean is, is too-big, old, blind for us-too beau-tiful." He sought the million suns of the Milky Way. "Even this black ocean we're wrecked in."

"That's odd," said Ryerson. "I thought it was your influence making me think more and more of the sea as a . . . not a friend, I suppose. But hope and life and, oh, I don't know. I only know, I'd like to take that cruise with you."

"By all means," said Maclaren. "I didn't mean I'd become afraid of the water, just that I've looked a little deeper into it. Maybe into everything. Hard to tell, but I've had a feeling now and then, out here, of what Seiichi used to call insight."

"One does learn something in s.p.a.ce," agreed Ryerson. "I began to, myself, once I'd decided that G.o.d hadn't cast me out here and G.o.d wasn't going to bring me back, it wasn't His part-Oh, about that cruise. I'd want to take my wife, but she'd understand about your, uh, companions."

"Surely," said Maclaren. "I'd expect that. You've told me so much about her, I feel like a family friend."

I feel as if I loved her.

"Come around and be avuncular when we've settled- d.a.m.n, I forgot the quarantine. Well, come see our home on Rama in thirty years!"

No, no, I am being foolish. The sky has crushed me back toward child. Because she has gallant eyes and hair like a dark flower, it does not mean she is the one possible woman to fulfill that need I have tried for most of my life to drown out. It is only that she is the first woman since my mother's death whom I realize is a human being.

And for that, Tamara, I have been slipping three-fourths of my ration back into the common share, so your man may inno-cently take half of that for his. It is little enough I can do, to repay what you who I never saw gave to me.

"Terangi! You are all right, aren't you?"

"Oh. Oh, yes, of course." Maclaren blinked at the other ar-mored shape, shadowy beside him. "Sorry, old chap. My mind wandered off on some or other daisy-plucking expedition."

"IT'S an odd thing," said Ryerson. "I find myself thinking more and more frivolously. As this cruise of yours, for instance. I really mean to join you, if you're still willing, and we'll take that champagne along and stop at every sunny is-land and loaf about and have a h.e.l.l of a good time. I wouldn't have expected this . . . what has happened . . . to change me in that direction. Would you?"

"Why, no," said Maclaren. "Uh, I thought actually you-"

"I know. Because G.o.d seemed to be scourging me, I believed the whole creation must lie under His wrath. And yet, well, I have been on the other side of Doomsday. Here, in nightmare land. And somehow, oh, I don't know, but the same G.o.d who kindled that nova saw equally fit to . . . to make wine for the wedding at Cana."