As for Nixie, time meant nothing to him. Suspended between life and death, he was not truly in the Hesperus at all; bu1~ somewhere el-se, outside of time. It was merely his shaggy little carcass that lay, stored like a ham, in the frozen hold of the ship.
Eventually the Captain slowed his ship, matched her with Venus and set her in a — parking orbit alongside Venus’s single satellite station. After transshipment and maddening delay the Vaughns were taken down in the winged shuttle Cupid into the clouds of Venus and landed at the north pole colony, Borealis.
For Charlie there was a still more maddening delay: cargo (which included Nixie) was unloaded after passengers and took many days because the mighty Hesperus held so much more than the little Cupid. He could not even go over to the freight sheds to inquire about Nixie as immigrants were held at the reception center for quarantine. Each one had received many shots during the five-month trip to innoculate them against the hazards of Venus; now they found that they must wait not only on most careful physical examination and observation to make sure that they were not bringing Earth diseases in with them but also to receive more shots not available aboard ship. Charlie spent the days with sore arms and gnawing anxiety.
So far he had had one glimpse outdoors — a permanently cloudy sky which never got dark and was never very bright. Borealis is at Venus’s north pole and the axis of the planet is nearly erect; the unseen Sun circled the horizon, never rising nor setting by more than a few degrees. The colony lived in eternal twilight.
The lessened gravity, nine-tenths that of Earth, Charlie did not notice even though he knew he should. It had been five months since he had felt Earth gravity and the Hesperus had maintained only one-third gravity in that outer part, where spin was most felt. Consequently Charlie felt heavier than seemed right, rather than lighter — his feet had forgotten full weight.
Nor did he notice the heavy concentration (about 2%) of carbon dioxide in the air, on which Venus’s mighty jungles depended. It had once been believed that so much carbon dioxide, breathed regularly, would kill a man, but long before space flight, around 1950, experiments had shown that even a higher concentration had no bad effects. Charlie simply didn’t notice it.
All in all, he might have been waiting in a dreary, barracks-like building in some tropical port on Earth. He did not see much of his father, who was busy by telephone and by germproof conference cage, conferring with his new employers and arranging for quarters, nor did he see much of his mother; Mrs. Vaughn had found the long trip difficult and was spending most of her time lying down.
Nine days after their arrival Charlie was sitting in the recreation room of the reception center, disconsolately reading a book he had already read on Earth. His father came in. “Come along.”
“Huh? What’s up?”
“They’re going to try to revive your dog. You want to be there, don’t you? Or maybe you’d rather not? I can go…and come back and tell you what happened.”
Charlie gulped. “I want to be there. Let’s go.”
The room was like the one back at White Sands where Nixie had been put to sleep, except that in place of the table there was a cage-like contraption with glass sides. A man was making adjustments on a complex apparatus which stood next to the glass box and was connected to it. He looked up. “Yes? We’re busy.”
“My name is Vaughn and this is my son Charlie. He’s the owner of the dog.”
The man frowned. “Didn’t you get my message? I’m Doctor Zecker, by the way. You’re too soon; we’re just bringing the dog up to temperature.”
Mr. Vaughn said, “Wait here, Charlie,” crossed the room and spoke in a low voice to Zecker.
Zecker shook his head. “Better wait outside.”
Mr. Vaughn again spoke quietly; Dr~ Zecker answered, “You don’t understand. I don’t even have proper equipment — I’ve had to adapt the force breather we use for hospital monkeys. It was never meant for a dog.”