Shrugging, Teejay went to a cabinet, handed Kevin a pair of
shoulder-jets, which he strapped at once to his vac-suit. The woman
took another suit and another pair of jets. "Once I heard voices out
here on Ganymede, too," she said. "So did Charlie Stedman. They killed
Charlie and they almost killed me. Enough's enough, Mac. I'm going with
you."
* * * * *
The ringwall was not very large. Slowed by his vac-suit, a man might
cover its diameter in half an hour. But Steve did not traverse the
circular area. Instead, he climbed the ringwall laboriously and then
made his way down, tumbling and sliding, to the rocky floor of the
shallow crater.
The voice came from within it--from within the crater. It could not be!
He told himself that more than once. The rock of Ganymede itself might
carry sound, but you'd feel it only as a throbbing through the soles of
your boots, for the vacuum of space which encroached on all sides could
not transmit sound-waves.
That was science. That was elementary. But the voice whispered in his
ears, ebbing and flowing, first loud, then soft--and science be damned.
Charlie was calling. _I am Charlie Stedman. I am Charlie Stedman_--That
was all, but it was enough. Charlie's name, and Charlie's voice.
"It can't be happening," Steve said, aloud, and heard his own
voice roaring inside the helmet. It drove the other voice, the
impossible voice, out for a moment, but it returned. Around the inner
circumference of the ringwall Steve ran, seeking a source for the
impossible. Sobbing, stumbling, he plunged ahead. It was only when he
returned to his starting point, a needle-like pinnacle of rock, that he
realized his supply of air would be exhausted in three hours.
* * * * *
"He couldn't have gone much farther than this, Mac."
"We've got plenty of air, Captain. I'm not giving up--"
The two figures soared on spurting jets a hundred feet above the
surface of Ganymede. When Teejay went higher every few moments, she
could barely make out the two spaceships, far away to the left.
Occasionally she saw the beaters working in teams of six, cumbersome
tanks of oxygen strapped to their backs.
"Did you hear the voice, Mac?"
"No."
"Had Stedman been drinking?"
"That's ridiculous. The boy was with us, and you saw for yourself."
"True. And I've said that the voices of Ganymede are no strangers to
me, anyway. Maybe I was trying to rationalize."
"We'll see when we find Steve."
"_If_ we find him. The fear can make you do crazy things out here, Mac.
Like going for too long without sufficient oxygen."
"That's what I'm worrying about."
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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