"The Helgae?" Stubbornly, Boone shrugged off his own mood. "If they could do anything to humans, they'd have done it when IC started operations out on Titan. As for this place—" He tilted the light-rod up to illuminate the ground ahead.
Its beam stopped short a bare six feet before them, cut off as completely as by a wall.
Eileen clutched his arm. "Fred—!"
Boone whipped the beam left.
Six feet it carried; no more.
Whirling, he pointed it back in the direction from which they had come, squarely at the sphere-ship.
But there was no ship; or if there was, the light-beam could not reach it.
Panic gripped Boone—the black, surging panic that roars up in a tidal wave when Man stands face to face with the unknown. Dimly, he knew that Eileen had swayed against him; that instinctively he'd thrown his arm about her. That was all.
Yet in spite of it, now, he forced himself into striding forward—one creaking step ... two ... three....
The light-beam shortened with each step.