The beacon was three hundred feet long, white in color, for some mysterious reason, and had cost the government of Earth something less than seventeen million dollars. It was packed with expensive robotic equipment, and was designed to be completely self-sustaining, once its controls were properly set. It did everything for passing starships that could possibly be expected of a well-reared beacon. It cheered them on the outward passage, making them feel less lonely. It greeted them, like a remote, cold Statue of Liberty upon their return, warned them of lurking meteorite storms within the vicinity of their course, and advised them of their position with relation to their destination when they contacted its sensitive radio. But most important, it warned them to steer clear of Pluto.
It very nearly failed before it had begun all this show of monkish wayside hospitality, however. It would have failed if it hadn't been for Knucklebone Smith.
They cut the beaconship loose from its convoy five hundred miles out, which was sufficient for it to spiral in on the minimum of power it carried and land safely.
Salvor-Jones and Smith had only to lie in their safety hammocks in the cramped temporary passenger cubicle. The ship would land by itself. Their duties began once it had established itself firmly on the bleak expanse of dark planet below them. They were to adjust the automatic controls, make tests, and generally see that the thing was as it should be for the lonely vigil that lay ahead.
Three weeks, Salvor-Jones indicated, should be plenty of time for all this. When it was finished, they could send a patrol cruiser from Ganymede to pick them up.
That was what he said but he was a very zealous man, and doted on thoroughness.
The fact was that they were finished with the tests in seven and a half hours, and there was nothing to do, unhappily, for the remaining twenty days except to entertain themselves as best they could, and wait. It might be said that things went too smoothly.
Professor Salvor-Jones was a smallish man with a square mustache of regulation black, and a lock of jet hair that hung at times over his left eye. He had a perpetual motion machine built into him, and a profound contempt for the normal pace of life.
But worst of all, in view of his predicament, he had Knucklebone Smith.
Salvor-Jones finished his checking at 1800 star time and came into the living compartment from the chill outer ship, or beacon, as it had now become. He blew on his hands, put away his check-sheet board, and stood uncertainly, gnawing his thumb and gazing at the spectacle of Smith hunkered silently in front of a portable radiant heater. Knucklebone was, as usual, the picture of contemplative suicide.