Blind Play

Nick Pappas had just crossed to the instrument panel of theTang Chuh-Chih's lifeboat when he heard a sound behind him. He turned quickly.

He had left the airlock between the lifeboat and the ship open. That had been stupid, he realized, but it was too late to correct it now. One of theTang's two other crew members was approaching down the corridor just beyond the airlock; if he saw the doors slide shut now he'd be immediately suspicious. That would leave Pappas inside the lifeboat, and before he could drain enough fuel from the ship's tanks into the lifeboat's, the other two could have the airlock cut open.

He still had a chance to hide—but before he could propel himself to the other end of the lifeboat, out of sight, Arne Birkerod appeared at the other side of the open airlock.

Birkerod smiled. Pappas stood still, gripping the pilot's seat in front of him.

"Hello, Arne," said Pappas."I was just checking over the—"

"Good morning, Nick—or good evening, if you like. Let's go up to the control cabin and see Garcia."

For a very brief moment, Pappas considered. Although theTang was in free fall, he was very conscious of the weight of the gun concealed inside his jacket. He might use it now, but the sound would bring Garcia. Better to bluff it through. The other two might not be suspicious yet, and in a pinch he had the advantage that they weren't armed."Sure," he said, and pushed himself across to where Birkerod stood.

"After you," said Birkerod, much more politely than usual.

Pappas smiled uncertainly. He planted both feet against the side of the airlock opening, then jumped off. He floated down the ship's corridor to where it took a sharp bend; there he grabbed a rung of a ladder bolted to the corridor wall.

Birkerod had pushed off harder than Pappas had; he arrived at the ladder at the same time."After you," he said again.

Pappas saw, at the end of the long corridor ahead, the open door to the control cabin. He pushed off in that direction.

Yusuf Garcia was in the ship's pilot's seat. Garcia was half Brazilian and half Malagasy. His eyes had a strong green tint which looked strange against the deep brown-black of his face. Pappas had always been a little afraid of him and the present situation didn't help that any; there was a gun in Garcia's hand.

Birkerod followed Pappas in, taking a seat facing Garcia."What did you find, Yusuf?" he asked casually.

"Well, Arne, I haven't finished checking up on our little conjecture; the calculator over there is still working on it. But while I was waiting I looked through our friend Pappas's locker. You may already have noticed what I found." He waved the gun."Where did you find our friend, by the way?"

Birkerod smiled."First place I looked."

"The lifeboat?"

"Yeah."

"What was he doing?"

"Nothing. I think I know how our little conjecture's going to turn out, though." He turned to Pappas, who had followed the exchange tensely."You know, Nick, my father was a fellow-countryman of yours back on Earth."

"Countryman?"

"That's right. He lived just north of Winnipeg. My mother was a Canadian, too. Both of them were in the second batch of colonists that left for Callisto. But it doesn't mean much to call you a Canadian any more, does it? Garcia and you and I, we're all Callistans now."

"Sure," said Pappas, wondering.

Callisto: A cold world. A small new world, and a cold world, and incredibly distant from the planet that had evolved its settlers.

In the thirty years since the exploration of Jupiter's satellites had begun, Callisto had had a very different history from the rest. On Ganymede, a hundred or so engineers had been working all that time on the tremendous task of raising the satellite's mean temperature to the point where an atmosphere could be provided and open-air cities and farms built in which Earthmen could live. The smaller satellites had been