Swiftly he set about gathering rocks. He planned to form the simple
four letter word HELP, with an exclamation point added for emphasis.
So engrossed was he in his work that he scarcely noted the unusual
volume of noise about him, or if he did notice it attributed it to
the small slides caused by his unearthing rocks from their natural
formation. Hours passed while he painstakingly formed the shape of an
enormous letter "H," a letter fully a tenth of a mile long. Exhausted
by the unaccustomed manual labor he straightened up a moment and cast
an approving eye across the extent of his handiwork. A gasp rose
involuntarily from his throat as a strange sight crossed his line of
vision. The land about him fairly swarmed with the peculiar, bony
creatures he had encountered the evening before, and as far as his eyes
could see there stretched an uninterrupted series of H's, all exactly
similar in shape, size and peculiarities of the original! And at the
edge of each of the letters sat a puffing group of emaciated, leathery
skinned Ganymedians! Their great, watery eyes blinking patiently and
soulfully in his direction!
He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. It was impossible to
proceed. In order to lay out another letter he would have to accomplish
the tremendous task of removing all the other H's as well. He shuddered
as he realized that he would have to repeat the process again and again
until finally the one word help, with a string of exclamation points
miles in length remained. Suddenly a thought struck him. Wasn't this
seemingly endless row of huge H's sufficient to attract the attention
of any searching party that happened to see it without going to the
trouble, double trouble at that, of adding the rest of the letters that
spelled out the word HELP? It seemed logical enough to him. With a
distinct air of relief he turned away, his arduous task of the past few
hours completed, thanks to these freakish creatures that inhabited this
moon.
* * * * *
Again the beginning of the short twilight was progressing and the sun
was settling rapidly in the sky--its glare and heat diminishing with
each passing moment. The massive bulk of Jupiter above could be seen
only as a long, thin, crescent that stretched one quarter of the way
across the visible sky. He experimentally lifted his helmet an inch or
two. A sharp gust of air scurried hurriedly around the contours of his
face and slightly ruffled his hair. He threw the helmet all the way
back and with exultation breathed in tremendous gulps of crisp, _fresh_
air. For the first time that day his powerful frame rose to its full
six feet of height and he stood statuesque, his shadow cast before him,
a symbol of man against the cosmos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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