Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/59

 of it as empty and neutral; never suspected its implicit hostility

Yet there was nothing there, nothing to be afraid of—except the worst thing of all: fear itself. The fear that has no cause, shape or center; that same amorphous fear that used to come creeping out of the dark, massing to invade the safety of one’s childish bed

I could feel the old panic, forgotten for so many years, rising up again. I was back in my infant self; all that I had learnt in the years between seemed to vanish; once more, I was the defenseless, beset by the incomprehensible. I wanted to run back to the ship, as to my mother, for safety. I all but did that

Yet not quite A vestige of my rational mind held me there. It kept on telling me that if I gave in to panic now, it would be far worse the next time, and the time after And gradually, while I stood, the vestige gathered the strength to push the panic back. Soon I could feel it winning, like warm blood flowing in. Then I felt better. I was able to force some objectivity.

I looked carefully round. From this low viewpoint there was no trace anywhere of the dark line that I had seen through the port when the Figurao was vertical. All the way round, red sand met purple sky in an endless, even line. There was nothing, nothing at all, on the face of the desert but the ship and myself. under the center of a vast, upturned bowl.

Then I made myself pay attention to the ship. It was easy to see what had happened. Below the light dust of the surface, the sand had formed a crust. Our weight had caused the pediment plate on one of the tripod legs to break through the crust, and we had toppled over. I wondered for a moment if Raul would be able to contrive some way of getting us vertical again—and then suddenly recollected why he would not

I went back into the ship, and looked for something to dig with. Camilo had not moved, and appeared to have fallen into a natural sleep. Luckily, someone had thought of equipping the ship with a sort of entrenching tool. It was small, but it would have to do. Getting Raul outside was unpleasant, and far from easy, but I managed it, and laid him on the sand while I dug. That was not easy work, either, in a spacesuit, and I thought it might take me sev- THE TROONS OF SPACE