Then the waiting vehicles moved toward the ramps to transport the Ganymeans to the quarters that had been made ready for them. The vehicles could not manage more than a few Ganymeans at one time, even stripped of seats and removable fittings, so they concentrated primarily on moving the sick and enfeebled, of whom there were many. The rest, guided by the spacesuited pygmy figures now dotting the scene, began a slow trek on foot to-
ward the buildings waiting for them. Before long a broken procession of huddled groups and stragglers stretched across the ice from the ship to the base proper. Above it all, in the harshness of seminight, the stars stared down in stony-eyed indifference.
The dome had become very quiet. Grim faces looked out over the scene, each one an impenetrable mask preserving the privacy of thoughts that were not for sharing. No video record would ever recapture the feelings of this moment, whatever it might show, however many times it might be seen.
After a while, a sergeant who was standing next to Hunt turned his head a fraction. “Man, I don’t know,” he muttered quietly. “What a hell of a way to come home.”
“What a hell of a home to come home to,” Hunt replied.
The accommodations available at Main were not sufficient to hold all the Ganymeans, who numbered more than four hundred, so the majority were obliged to remain in the Shapieron. Nevertheless, just being on a firm surface again, even if it was only the frozen ball of rubble called Ganymede, and among other beings, seemed to provide the aliens with a badly needed psychological tonic. Earthmen showed them the facilities and amenities that were available in their new quarters, pointed out the stocks of supplies and food-stuffs provided for experimentation, and the various other items which, it was hoped, would help to make life reasonably comfortable. Meanwhile other UNSA crews delivered similar loads, hurriedly ferried from one of the orbiting freighters, to the Ganymeans still inside their ship. Then the new arrivals were left in peace and to their own devices.
After a much-needed rest, they announced that they were ready to resume their dialogue with their hosts. Accordingly, an evening conference was arranged between the leaders and certain other individuals of the two races, to be held in the officers’ mess and to be followed by a formal welcoming dinner. Hunt was among those invited to attend; so was Danchekker.
chapter nine
The temperature had originally been lowered to make the Ganymeans feel more at home, but by the time everybody had been crammed into the officers’ mess for an hour or more and pails of tobacco smoke were hanging sullenly beneath the lights, it turned out to be just as well for all. Danchekker finished what he had been saying into the microphone of the headset that he was wearing over his sweater, then resumed his seat. Garuth replied from the far end of the room, where the Ganymean contingent was concentrated.
“I think I’d better let a scientist answer a scientist on that one, Professor.” He looked down and behind him at one of the other Ganymeans. “Shilohin, will you respond?” All the Earthmen present who did not possess Ganymean kits had been equipped with headsets similar to Danchekker’s and could thus follow ZORAC’s translation of the proceedings. The machine’s ability in this respect was now quite passable although, mainly as a result of having conversed with many and varied individuals, it had not yet fully established a way to disentangle formal English constructions from American colloquialisms, a defect that sometimes yielded hilarious results.
Shilohin, the chief scientist of the Ganymean expedition, had already been introduced to the company. As Garuth sat down to make room, she rose to her feet and spoke. “First, I must congratulate the scientists of Earth for their superb piece of figuring out. Yes, as Professor Danchekker has just suggested, we Ganymeans do not enjoy a high tolerance to carbon dioxide. He and his colleagues were also absolutely correct in the picture that they had deduced of conditions on Minerva at the time of our departure-a planet that they had not even seen.”