No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see that space exploration _made_ a man a reckless fool by doing things on one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world. The thought intruded itself: _why_ hadn't I recognized this before I let Quade escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment? I threw away that idea along with my half-used cigarette. It might very well be true, but how did that help now? I had to _think_. I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane reasons--he was the most important member of the crew. With him around, there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have endless opinions to contend with. But it wouldn't do any good to go out no better equipped than he. There was no time to wait for tractors to be built if we wanted to reach him alive, and we certainly couldn't reach him five or ten miles out with our three miles of safety line. We would have to go in spacesuits. But how would that leave us any better off than Quade? Why was Quade vulnerable in his spacesuit, as I knew from experience he would be? How could we be less vulnerable, or preferably invulnerable? * * * * * "Captain, you got nothing to worry about," Quartermaster Farley said. He patted a space helmet paternally. "You got yourself a self-contained environment. The suit's eye looks into yours at the arteries in the back of your eyeball so it can read your amber corpuscles and feed you your oxygen in the right amounts; you're a bottle-fed baby. If transphasia gets you seeing limburger, turn on the radar and you're air-conditioned as an igloo. Nothing short of a cosmic blast can dent that hide. You got it made." "You are right," I said, "only transphasia comes right through these air-fast joints." "Something strange about the trance, Captain," Farley said darkly. "Any spaceman can tell you that. Things we don't understand." "I'm talking about something we do understand--_sound_. These suits perfectly soundproof?" "Well, you can pick up sound by conduction. Like putting two helmets together and talking without using radio. You can't insulate enough to block out all sound and still have a man-shaped suit. You have--" "I know. Then you have something like a tractor or a miniature spaceship. There isn't time for that. We will have to live with the sound." "What do you think he's going to hear out there, Captain? We'd like to find one of those beautiful sirens on some planet, believe me, but--" "I believe you," I said quickly. "Let's leave it at that. I don't know what he will hear; what's worrying me is _how_ he'll hear it, in what sensory medium. I hope the sound doesn't blind him. His radar is his only chance."