diagram of Titan, was circled with exclamation points, a reminder that here under no circumstance should one leave one's vehicle.
The residual radiation from the thermonuclears was still unsafe for a man outside the armor of his strider. Between the exit and entrance to the defile lay a mile-long plain, black, as if blanketed with soot. On it, he could hear Goss again. Parvis said nothing about his collision with the rock. Goss told him that after the defile, at the Promontory, the halfway point, Grail would take over on the radio to guide him. There, also, would begin the third, final stretch of the trail, through the Depression.
The black powder filling the plain between the two bulges of the formation covered the legs of the Digla above its knees. Parvis walked through the low puffs quickly and easily, toward the nearly perpendicular walls of the corridor. He reached a wall, stepping on rubble that was vitreous: smooth surfaces fractured by the solar heat of the explosions. These pieces, hard as diamonds, made sounds like gunfire when ground beneath the iridium heels of the Digla. But the bottom of the defile was as flat as a table. He walked between the blackened walls, in the rumbling echo of steps, steps that were his own: he had joined with the machine, it was his magnified body. Then he found himself in darkness so sudden, so thick, that he had to turn on the headlights. Their mercury glare contended, in the swirl of shadows between the pillar-jaws of rock, with the cold, reddish, unfriendly light of the sky framed by the far gate of the defile, which became larger the closer he drew to it. Toward the end the defile narrowed, as if it would not let his giant pass, as if he would be wedging the square shoulders in a chimneylike cleft. But this was an illusion—on either side there was clearance of several meters. Nevertheless, he slowed, because Pollux swayed more from side to side the faster it went. There was no help for this. The duck waddle when hurrying arose from the laws of dynamics, from angular momentum, and the engineers were unable to overcome it completely. For the last three hundred meters he again ascended, more and more steeply, planting the feet with care, leaning forward a little from his high, suspended place to see what he was stepping on. This close examination took so much of his attention that it was only when the light surrounding him on all sides filled the cabin that he lifted his head and saw the next—altogether different—unearthly landscape.
The Promontory stood above a white and ruddy ocean of fleecy clouds; solitary, black, slender, it was the only thing in the sky from horizon to horizon. Parvis understood why some called it God's Finger. Slowly he came to a halt and, with the magnificent scene spread out before him, tried—over the soft singing of the turbines—to catch the voice of Grail. But he heard nothing. He tried to raise Goss, but Goss did not respond, either. Parvis was still in radio shadow. Then a curious thing happened. Before, radio contact with the spaceport was somehow irritating to him, unpleasant, perhaps because he felt, not in Goss's words so much as in the man's voice, a concealed anxiety, a disbelief almost, that Parvis would make it, and in that anxiety there was an element of pity, which Parvis couldn't stand. But now that he was truly alone, with neither a human voice nor the automatic pulse of the radio beacon from Grail to guide him in this endless white waste, he felt not relief at being free but the uneasiness of a man who, in a palace full of marvels, though he has not the least desire to leave, sees the main door—before, open and inviting—now close behind him. He scolded himself for this unproductive frame of mind, akin to fear, and began to walk down to the surface of the sea of cloud, along a gradual incline—icy in places—directly toward the Promontory. Black, reaching the sky, it was bent, like a finger beckoning.
Once, twice, the
The residual radiation from the thermonuclears was still unsafe for a man outside the armor of his strider. Between the exit and entrance to the defile lay a mile-long plain, black, as if blanketed with soot. On it, he could hear Goss again. Parvis said nothing about his collision with the rock. Goss told him that after the defile, at the Promontory, the halfway point, Grail would take over on the radio to guide him. There, also, would begin the third, final stretch of the trail, through the Depression.
The black powder filling the plain between the two bulges of the formation covered the legs of the Digla above its knees. Parvis walked through the low puffs quickly and easily, toward the nearly perpendicular walls of the corridor. He reached a wall, stepping on rubble that was vitreous: smooth surfaces fractured by the solar heat of the explosions. These pieces, hard as diamonds, made sounds like gunfire when ground beneath the iridium heels of the Digla. But the bottom of the defile was as flat as a table. He walked between the blackened walls, in the rumbling echo of steps, steps that were his own: he had joined with the machine, it was his magnified body. Then he found himself in darkness so sudden, so thick, that he had to turn on the headlights. Their mercury glare contended, in the swirl of shadows between the pillar-jaws of rock, with the cold, reddish, unfriendly light of the sky framed by the far gate of the defile, which became larger the closer he drew to it. Toward the end the defile narrowed, as if it would not let his giant pass, as if he would be wedging the square shoulders in a chimneylike cleft. But this was an illusion—on either side there was clearance of several meters. Nevertheless, he slowed, because Pollux swayed more from side to side the faster it went. There was no help for this. The duck waddle when hurrying arose from the laws of dynamics, from angular momentum, and the engineers were unable to overcome it completely. For the last three hundred meters he again ascended, more and more steeply, planting the feet with care, leaning forward a little from his high, suspended place to see what he was stepping on. This close examination took so much of his attention that it was only when the light surrounding him on all sides filled the cabin that he lifted his head and saw the next—altogether different—unearthly landscape.
The Promontory stood above a white and ruddy ocean of fleecy clouds; solitary, black, slender, it was the only thing in the sky from horizon to horizon. Parvis understood why some called it God's Finger. Slowly he came to a halt and, with the magnificent scene spread out before him, tried—over the soft singing of the turbines—to catch the voice of Grail. But he heard nothing. He tried to raise Goss, but Goss did not respond, either. Parvis was still in radio shadow. Then a curious thing happened. Before, radio contact with the spaceport was somehow irritating to him, unpleasant, perhaps because he felt, not in Goss's words so much as in the man's voice, a concealed anxiety, a disbelief almost, that Parvis would make it, and in that anxiety there was an element of pity, which Parvis couldn't stand. But now that he was truly alone, with neither a human voice nor the automatic pulse of the radio beacon from Grail to guide him in this endless white waste, he felt not relief at being free but the uneasiness of a man who, in a palace full of marvels, though he has not the least desire to leave, sees the main door—before, open and inviting—now close behind him. He scolded himself for this unproductive frame of mind, akin to fear, and began to walk down to the surface of the sea of cloud, along a gradual incline—icy in places—directly toward the Promontory. Black, reaching the sky, it was bent, like a finger beckoning.
Once, twice, the
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