I had figured this carefully; I didn’t regard this as a stroll in the garden -not at night, not on Pluto! So I counted thirty seconds and tied my line while waiting for eyes to adjust to starlight. I opened them.
And I couldn’t see a darned thing!
Not a star. Not even the difference between sky and ground. My back was to the tunnel and the helmet shaded my face like a sunbonnet; I should have been able to see the walkway. Nothing.
I turned the helmet and saw something that accounted both for black sky and the quake we had felt-an active volcano. It may have been five miles away or fifty, but I could not doubt what it was-a jagged, angry red scar low in the sky.
But I didn’t stop to stare. I switched on the headlamp, splashed it on the righthand windward edge, and started a clumsy trot, keeping close to that side, so that if I stumbled I would have the entire road to recover in before the wind could sweep me off. That wind scared me. I kept the line coiled in my left hand and paid it out as I went, keeping it fairly taut. The coil felt stiff in my fingers.
The wind not only frightened me, it hurt. It was a cold so intense that it felt like flame. It burned and blasted, then numbed. My right side, getting the brunt of it, began to go and then my left side hurt more than the right.
I could no longer feel the line. I stopped, leaned forward and got the coil in the light from the headlamp-that’s another thing that needs fixing! the headlamp should swivel.
The coil was half gone, I had come a good fifty yards. I was depending on the rope to tell me; it was a hundred-meter climbing line, so when I neared its end I would be as far out as the Mother Thing had wanted. Hurry, Kip!
(“Get cracking, boy! It’s cold out here.”)
I stopped again. Did I have the box?
I couldn’t feel it. But the headlamp showed my right hand clutched around it. Stay there, fingers! I hurried on, counting steps. One! Two! Three! Four! …
When I reached forty I stopped and glanced over the edge, saw that I was at the highest part where the road crossed the brook and remembered that it was about midway. That brook-methane, was it?-was frozen solid, and I knew that the night was cold.
There were a few loops of line on my left arm-close enough. I dropped the line, moved cautiously to the middle of the way, eased to my knees and left hand, and started to put the box down.
My fingers wouldn’t unbend.
I forced them with my left hand, got the box out of my fist. That diabolical wind caught it and I barely saved it from rolling away. With both hands I set it carefully upright.
(“Work your fingers, bud. Pound your hands together!”)
I did so. I could tighten the muscles of my forearms, though it was tearing agony to flex fingers. Clumsily steadying the box with my left hand, I groped for the little knob on top.
I couldn’t feel it but it turned easily once I managed to close my fingers on it; I could see it turn.
It seemed to come to life, to purr. Perhaps I heard vibration, through gloves and up my suit; I certainly couldn’t have felt it, not the shape my fingers were in. I hastily let go, got awkwardly to my feet and backed up, so that I could splash the headlamp on it without leaning over.
I was through, the Mother Thing’s job was done, and (I hoped) before deadline. If I had had as much sense as the ordinary doorknob, I would have turned and hurried into the tunnel faster than I had come out. But I was fascinated by what it was doing.
It seemed to shake itself and three spidery little legs grew out the bottom. It raised up until it was standing on its own little tripod, about a foot high. It shook itself again and I thought the wind would blow it over. But the spidery legs splayed out, seemed to bite into the road surface and it was rock firm.