* * * * * "There they are!" Nagurski called. "Quade's footsteps again, just beyond that rocky ridge." The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old, mellow Havana. The footsteps were faint traces of whipped cream across the dark, rich taste of the planet. I splashed some wine from my drinking tube against the roof of my mouth to sharpen my taste. It brought out the footsteps sharper. It also made the landscape more of a teen-ager's caloric nightmare. The four of us pulled ourselves closer together by reeling in more of our safety line. Farley and Hoffman, Nagurski and myself, we were cabled together. It gave us a larger hunk of reality to hold onto. Even so, things wavered for me during a wisp of time. We stumbled over the ridge, feeling out the territory. It was a sticky job crawling over a melting, chunk-style Hershey bar. I was thankful for the invigorating Sousa march blasting inside my helmet. Before the tape had cut in, kicked on by the decibel gauge, I had heard or felt something dark and ominous in the outside air. "Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail," Nagurski said soberly. "This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain. _You_ weren't giggling, sir?" "I have never giggled in my life, Nagurski." "Yes, sir. That's what we all thought." A moment later, Nagurski added, "Anyway, I just noticed it was my shelf--my, that is, self." The basso profundo performing _Figaro_ on my headset climbed to a girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quade and I had first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels. "Take a good look around, boys," I said. "What do you see?" "Quail," Nagurski replied. "That's what I see." "You," I said carefully, "have been in space a _long_ time. Look again." "I see our old buddy, Quail." I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It _was_ Quade. A man in a spacesuit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead. Grudgingly I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the ridge. A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed on sluggishly to Quade's side, moving to the tempo of _Pomp and Circumstance_. Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges. The Quartermaster rose with grim deliberation, and hiccuped. "Better get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing before with transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming wind--psychosomatic reaction--and his heating circuits compensated for the cool flesh. The poor devil's got frostbite and heat prostration." * * * * *