A rustle of movement. At his elbow, Eileen said, "Fred, that light—this black—I don't understand."
"I'm afraid I do." Boone rubbed the stiffness from his neck and quit trying to watch the spark above. "We've always thought of the outer worlds as rock and ice. Where this one's concerned, we were wrong. There's ice, all right, but at least in places it's just a shell, with a warm pocket underneath."
He could hear Eileen's breath hiss in the darkness. "Then you mean—"
"Yes. We must have been crossing this planetoid's orbit when the crew abandoned ship. It's too small to have much gravity, but there was enough to pull us in. So we crashed through the ice-shell and landed here."
The girl's body touched his. He could feel her shiver. "Then those lights we see are the stars as they pass above the hole we made? We'll have to go through it again to get back into space?"
"That's right." Boone put his arm about her shoulders. "It shouldn't be too hard. I'm betting this is Hyperion—and that means we are close enough to jump to Titan, even in a carrier. We'll know for sure when it gets light again. I can check the time from sunset to sunrise against the tables that show how long it takes Hyperion to revolve on its axis."
"You make it seem so easy." Eileen sighed. "In a way, I'm not even sure I want to go."
"That has a nice sound." Boone held her closer.
But she twisted. "No. It—it isn't what you think, Fred."