Her glance went Saturnward, as if seeking the ship where her family waited. She might have spied it, too, as a star that moved among stars, by the solar sail. However, that was now furled, and naked vision could not find even such huge hulls as Chronos possessed, across millions of kilometers.

  Luis Garcilaso asked from his pilot’s chair: “What harm if we carry on our little commedia dell’ arte?” His Arizona drawl soothed the ear. “We won’t be landin’ for a while yet, and everything’s on automatic till then.” He was small, swart, deft, still in his twenties.

  Danzig twisted the leather of his countenance into a frown. At sixty, thanks to his habits as well as to longevity, he kept springiness in a lank frame; he could joke about wrinkles and encroaching baldness. In this hour, he set humor aside.

  “Do you mean you don’t know what’s the matter?” His beak of a nose pecked at a scanner screen which magnified the moonscape. “Almighty God! That’s a new world we’re about to touch down on—tiny, but a world, and strange in ways we can’t guess. Nothing’s been here before us except one unmanned flyby and one unmanned lander that soon quit sending. We can’t rely on meters and cameras alone. We’ve got to use our eyes and brains.” He addressed Scobie. “You should realize that in your bones, Colin, if nobody else aboard does. You’ve worked on Luna as well as Earth. In spite of all the settlements, in spite of all the study that’s been done, did you never hit any nasty surprises?”

  The burly man had recovered his temper. Into his own voice came a softness that recalled the serenity of the Idaho mountains whence he hailed. “True,” he admitted. “There’s no such thing as having too much information when you’re off Earth, or enough information, for that matter.” He paused. “Nevertheless, timidity can be as dangerous as rashness—not that you’re timid, Mark,” he added in haste. “Why, you and Rachel could’ve been in a nice O’Neill on a nice pension—”

  Danzig relaxed and smiled. “This was a challenge, if I may sound pompous. Just the same, we want to get home when we’re finished here. We should be in time for the Bar Mitzvah of a great-grandson or two. Which requires staying alive.”

  “My point is, if you let yourself get buffaloed, you may end up in a worse bind than—Oh, never mind. You’re probably right, and we should not have begun fantasizing. The spectacle sort of grabbed us. It won’t happen again.”

  Yet when Scobie’s eyes looked anew on the glacier, they had not quite the dispassion of a scientist in them. Nor did Broberg’s or Garcilaso’s. Danzig slammed fist into palm. “The game, the damned childish game,” he muttered, too low for his companions to hear. “Was nothing saner possible for them?”

  -2-

  Was nothing saner possible for them? Perhaps not.

  If we are to answer the question, we should first review some history. When early industrial operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin, then greater knowledge of sister planets, prior to their development, became a clear necessity. The effort must start with Mars, the least hostile. No natural law forbade sending small manned spacecraft yonder. What did was the absurdity of as much fuel, time, and effort as were required, in order that three or four persons might spend a few days in a single locality.

  Construction of the J. Peter Vajk took longer and cost more, but paid off when it, virtually a colony, spread its immense solar sail and took a thousand people to their goal in half a year and in comparative comfort. The payoff grew overwhelming when they, from orbit, launched Earthward the beneficiated minerals of Phobos that they did not need for their own purposes. Those purposes, of course, turned on the truly thorough, long-term study of Mars, and included landings of auxiliary craft, for ever lengthier stays, all over the surface.

  Sufficient to remind you of this much; no need to detail the triumphs of the same basic concept throughout the inner Solar System, as far as Jupiter. The tragedy of the Vladimir became a reason to try again for Mercury…and, in a left-handed, political way, pushed the Britannic-American consortium into its Chronos project.

  They named the ship better than they knew. Sailing time to Saturn was eight years.

  Not only the scientists must be healthy, lively-minded people. Crew-folk, technicians, medics, constables, teachers, clergy, entertainers, every element of an entire community must be. Each must command more than a single skill, for emergency backup, and keep those skills alive by regular, tedious rehearsal. The environment was limited and austere; communication with home was soon a matter of beamcasts; cosmopolitans found themselves in what amounted to an isolated village. What were they to do?

  Assigned tasks. Civic projects, especially work on improving the interior of the vessel. Research, or writing a book, or the study of a subject, or sports, or hobby clubs, or service and handicraft enterprises, or more private interactions, or—There was a wide choice of television tapes, but Central Control made sets usable for only three hours in twenty-four. You dared not get into the habit of passivity.

  Individuals grumbled, squabbled, formed and dissolved cliques, formed and dissolved marriages or less explicit relationships, begot and raised occasional children, worshipped, mocked, learned, yearned, and for the most part found reasonable satisfaction in life. But for some, including a large proportion of the gifted, what made the difference between this and misery was their psychodramas.

  —Minamoto

  Dawn crept past the ice, out onto the rock. It was a light both dim and harsh, yet sufficient to give Garcilaso the last data he wanted for descent.

  The hiss of the motor died away, a thump shivered through the hull, landing jacks leveled it, stillness fell. The crew did not speak for a while. They were staring out at Iapetus.

  Immediately around them was desolation like that which reigns in much of the Solar System. A darkling plain curved visibly away to a horizon that, at man-height, was a bare three kilometers distant; higher up in the cabin, you saw farther, but that only sharpened the sense of being on a minute ball awhirl among the stars. The ground was thinly covered with cosmic dust and gravel; here and there a minor crater or an upthrust mass lifted out of the regolith to cast long, knife-edged, utterly black shadows. Light reflections lessened the number of visible stars, turning heaven into a bowlful of night. Halfway between the zenith and the south, half-Saturn and its rings made the vista beautiful.

  Likewise did the glacier—or the glaciers? Nobody was sure. The sole knowledge was that, seen from afar, Iapetus gleamed bright at the western end of its orbit and grew dull at the eastern end, because one side was covered with whitish material while the other side was not; the dividing line passed nearly beneath the planet which it eternally faced. The probes from Chronos had reported the layer was thick, with puzzling spectra that varied from place to place, and little more about it.

  In this hour, four humans gazed across pitted emptiness and saw wonder rear over the world-rim. From north to south went ramparts, battlements, spires, depths, peaks, cliffs, their shapes and shadings an infinity of fantasies. On the right Saturn cast soft amber, but that was nearly lost in the glare from the east, where a sun dwarfed almost to stellar size nonetheless blazed too fierce to look at, just above the summit. There the silvery sheen exploded in brilliance, diamond-glitter of shattered light, chill blues and greens; dazzled to tears, eyes saw the vision glimmer and waver, as if it bordered on dreamland, or on Faerie. But despite all delicate intricacies, underneath was a sense of chill and of brutal mass; here dwelt also the Frost Giants.

  Broberg was the first to breathe forth a word. “The City of Ice.”

  “Magic,” said Garcilaso as low. “My spirit could lose itself forever, wanderin’ yonder. I’m not sure I’d mind. My cave is nothin’ like this, nothin—”

  “Wait a minute!” snapped Danzig in alarm. “Oh, yes. Curb the imagination, please.” Though Scobie was quick to utter sobrieties, they sounded drier than needful. “We know from probe transmissions the scarp is, well, Grand Canyon-like. Sure, it’s more spectacular than we realized, which I suppose makes it still more of a mystery.” He turned to Broberg. “I’ve never seen ice or snow as sculptured as this. Have you, Jean? You’ve mentioned visiting a lot of mountain and winter scenery when you were a girl in Canada,”

  The physicist shook her head. “No. Never. It doesn’t seem possible. What could have done it? There’s no weather here…is there?”

  “Perhaps the same phenomenon is responsible that laid a hemisphere bare,” Danzig suggested.

  “Or that covered a hemisphere,” Scobie said. “An object seventeen hundred kilometers across shouldn’t have gases, frozen or otherwise. Unless it’s a ball of such stuff clear through, like a comet. Which we know it’s not.” As if to demonstrate, he unclipped a pair of pliers from a nearby tool rack, tossed it, and caught it on its slow way down. His own ninety kilos of mass weighed about seven. For that, the satellite must be essentially rocky.

  Garcilaso registered impatience. “Let’s stop tradin’ facts and theories we already know about, and start findin’ answers.”

  Rapture welled in Broberg. “Yes, let’s get out. Over there.”

  “Hold on,” protested Danzig as Garcilaso and Scobie nodded eagerly. “You can’t be serious. Caution, step-by-step advance—”

  “No, it’s too wonderful for that.” Broberg’s tone shivered.

  “Yeah, to hell with fiddlin’ around,” Garcilaso said. “We need at least a preliminary scout right away.”

  The furrows deepened in Danzig’s visage. “You mean you too, Luis? But you’re our pilot!”

  “On the ground I’m general assistant, chief cook, and bottle washer to you scientists. Do you imagine I want to sit idle, with somethin’ like that to explore?” Garcilaso calmed his voice. “Besides, if I should come to grief, any of you can fly back, given a bit of radio talk from Chronos and a final approach under remote control.”

  “It’s quite reasonable, Mark,” Scobie argued. “Contrary to doctrine, true; but doctrine was made for us, not vice versa. A short distance, low gravity, and we’ll be on the lookout for hazards. The point is, until we have some notion of what that ice is like, we don’t know what the devil to pay attention to in this vicinity, either. No, we’ll take a quick jaunt. When we return, then we’ll plan.”

  Danzig stiffened. “May I remind you, if anything goes wrong, help is at least a hundred hours away? An auxiliary like this can’t boost any higher if it’s to get back, and it’d take longer than that to disengage the big boats from Saturn and Titan.”

  Scobie reddened at the implied insult. “And may I remind you, on the ground I am the captain? I say an immediate reconnaissance is safe and desirable. Stay behind if you want—In fact, yes, you must. Doctrine is right in saying the vessel mustn’t be deserted.”

  Danzig studied him for several seconds before murmuring, “Luis goes, however, is that it?”

  “Yes!” cried Garcilaso so that the cabin rang.

  Broberg patted Danzig’s limp hand. “It’s okay, Mark,” she said gently. “We’ll bring back samples for you to study. After that, I wouldn’t be surprised but what the best ideas about procedure will be yours.”

  He shook his head. Suddenly he looked very tired. “No,” he replied in a monotone, “that won’t happen. You see, I’m only a hardnosed industrial chemist who saw this expedition as a chance to do interesting research. The whole way through space, I kept myself busy with ordinary affairs, including, you remember, a couple of inventions I’d wanted leisure to develop. You three, you’re younger, you’re romantics—”

  “Aw, come off it, Mark.” Scobie tried to laugh. “Maybe Jean and Luis are, a little, but me, I’m about as other-worldly as a plate of haggis.”

  “You played the game, year after year, until at last the game started playing you. That’s what’s going on this minute, no matter how you rationalize your motives.” Danzig’s gaze on the geologist, who was his friend, lost the defiance that had been in it and turned wistful. “You might try recalling Delia Ames.”

  Scobie bristled. “What about her? The business was hers and mine, nobody else’s.”

  “Except afterward she cried on Rachel’s shoulder, and Rachel doesn’t keep secrets from me. Don’t worry, I’m not about to blab. Anyhow, Delia got over it. But if you’d recollect objectively, you’d see what had happened to you, already three years ago.”

  Scobie set his jaw. Danzig smiled in the left corner of his mouth. “No, I suppose you can’t,” he went on. “I admit I’d no idea either, till now, how far the process had gone. At least keep your fantasies in the background while you’re outside, will you? Can you?”

  In half a decade of travel, Scobie’s apartment had become idiosyncratically his—perhaps more so than was usual, since he remained a bachelor who seldom had women visitors for longer than a few nightwatches at a time. Much of the furniture he had made himself; the agrosections of Chronos produced wood, hide, fiber as well as food and fresh air. His handiwork ran to massiveness and archaic carved decorations. Most of what he wanted to read he screened from the data banks, of course, but a shelf held a few old books, Childe’s border ballads, an eighteenth-century family Bible (despite his agnosticism), a copy of The Machinery of Freedom which had nearly disintegrated but displayed the signature of the author, and other valued miscellany. Above them stood a model of a sailboat in which he had cruised Northern European waters, and a trophy he had won in handball aboard this ship. On the bulkheads hung his fencing sabers and numerous pictures—of parents and siblings, of wilderness areas he had tramped on Earth, of castles and mountains and heaths in Scotland where he had often been too, of his geological team on Luna, of Thomas Jefferson and, imagined, Robert the Bruce.

  On a certain evenwatch he had, though, been seated before his telescreen. Lights were turned low in order that he might fully savor the image. Auxiliary craft were out in a joint exercise, and a couple of their personnel used the opportunity to beam back views of what they saw.

  That was splendor. Starful space made a chalice for Chronos. The two huge, majestically counter-rotating cylinders, the entire complex of linkages, ports, locks, shields, collectors, transmitters, docks, all became Japanesely exquisite at a distance of several hundred kilometers. It was the solar sail which filled most of the screen, like a turning golden sun-wheel; yet remote vision could also appreciate its spiderweb intricacy, soaring and subtle curvatures, even the less-than-gossamer thinness. A mightier work than the Pyramids, a finer work than a refashioned chromosome, the ship moved on toward a Saturn which had become the second brightest beacon in the firmament.

  The door chime hauled Scobie out of his exaltation. As he started across the deck, he stubbed his toe on a table leg. Coriolis force caused that. It was slight, when a hull this size spun to give a full gee of weight, and a thing to which he had long since adapted; but now and then he got so interested in something that Terrestrial habits returned. He swore at his absent-mindedness, good-naturedly, since he anticipated a pleasurable time.

  When he opened the door, Delia Ames entered in a single stride. At once she closed it behind her and stood braced against it. She was a tall blonde woman who did electronics maintenance and kept up a number of outside activities. “Hey!” Scobie said. “What’s wrong? You look like—” he tried for levity— “something my cat wouldn’t’ve dragged in, if we had any mice or beached fish aboard.”

  She drew a ragged breath. Her Australian accent thickened till he had trouble understanding: “I…today…I happened to be at the same cafeteria table as George Harding—”

  Unease tingled through Scobie. Harding worked in Ames’ department but had much more in common with him. In the same group to which they both belonged, Harding likewise took a vaguely ancestral role, N’Kuma the Lionslayer. “What happened?” Scobie asked. Woe stared back at him. “He mentioned…you and he and the rest…you’d be taking your next holiday together…to carry on your, your bloody act uninterrupted.”

  “Well, yes. Work at the new park over in Starboard Hull will be suspended till enough metal’s been recycled for the water pipes. The area will be vacant, and my gang has arranged to spend a week’s worth of days—”

  “But you and I were going to Lake Armstrong!”

  “Uh, wait, that was just a notion we talked about, no definite plan yet, and this is such an unusual chance—Later, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He took her hands. They felt cold. He essayed a smile. “Now, c’mon, we were going to cook a festive dinner together and afterward spend a, shall we say, quiet evening at home. But for a start, this absolutely gorgeous presentation on the screen—”

  She jerked free of him. The gesture seemed to calm her. “No, thanks,” she said, flat-voiced. “Not when you’d rather be with that Broberg woman. I only came by to tell you in person I’m getting out of the way of you two.”

  “Huh?” He stepped back. “What the flaming hell do you mean?”

  “You know jolly well.”

  “I don’t! She, I, she’s happily married, got two kids, she’s older than me, we’re friends, sure, but there’s never been a thing between us that wasn’t in the open and on the level—” Scobie swallowed. “You suppose maybe I’m in love with her?”

  Ames looked away. Her fingers writhed together. “I’m not about to go on being a mere convenience to you, Colin. You have plenty of those. Myself, I’d hoped—But I was wrong, and I’m going to cut my losses before they get worse.”

  “But…Dee, I swear I haven’t fallen for anybody else, and I, I swear you’re more than a body to me, you’re a fine person—” She stood mute and withdrawn. Scobie gnawed his lip before he could tell her: “Okay, I admit it, a main reason I volunteered for this trip was I’d lost out in a love affair on Earth. Not that the project doesn’t interest me, but I’ve come to realize what a big chunk out of my life it is. You, more than any other woman, Dee, you’ve gotten me to feel better about the situation.”