"She isn't in this hell hole, Digger. You wouldn't expect her to be where we could find her easily."
Scooping the small beast up under his good arm, he quickly climbed the steep, slimy slope of the cave. The other arm in his suit hung empty. That empty arm in the spacesuit told the story of an earthman become voluntary exile, choosing the desolation of space to the companionship of other humans who would deluge him with unwonted sympathy. The spacehound was friendly in its own fashion; fortunately, such complex things as sympathy were apparently outside its abilities. The two could interchange impressions of danger, comfort, pleasure, discomfort, fear, and appreciation of each other's company, but little more. Whether or not the creature could understand his thoughts, he could not tell.
As he went on, he reviewed, mentally, the events leading up to his landing here. The sudden appearance on his teleview screen of the face and slim shoulders of a girl. Her attractiveness plainly distinguishable through her helmet; for a moment he forgot that he disliked women. The call for help, cut short ... but not before he had learned that apparently she was being held prisoner on Asteroid Moira. He knew he'd have to do what he could even if it meant unwonted company for an indefinite length of time. The spell was gone soon after her face vanished; he remembered former experiences with attractive-looking girls. Damn traditions!
A change in his course and a landing on Asteroid Moira. Here he'd found a honeycomb of caves, all leading from one large main tunnel. The cavern walls had been of a translucent, quartz-like substance, ranging in color from yellowish-brown to violet-grey. It looked vaguely familiar, yet he could not place it. There was not time to examine it more carefully.
The room in which he'd found the evil, hungry lake had been the first one to the right. Now he crossed to the opening in the opposite wall. The mouth of this cave was much larger, wider than the other. He stood in the opening, slowly swung the beam of his torch around the smooth walls, still holding Digger, who, by now, was indicating that he'd like to be set down. Nat released him unthinkingly, his mind fully taken up with what the light revealed.
Spaceships! The room was packed with them—all sizes, old and new. A veritable sargasso. At first, he thought they might be craft belonging to nameless inhabitants of this world, but, as he approached them, he recognized Terrestrial identifications.
The first was a scout ship of American Spaceways! Nat recognized the name: Ceres, remembered a telecast account of its disappearance in space. There was a neat little reward for information as to its whereabouts. Nat's lips curled in derision: it wouldn't equal the expense of his journey out here. There was a deep groove in the smooth material of the floor where the ship had been dragged through the doorway into the room. What machines could have done this work without leaving their own traces? He went to the other ships: all were small, mostly single or two-passenger craft. The last entry in the logs of many was to the effect that they were about to land on the Asteroid Moira to rescue a girl held captive there.
None had crashed; all ships were in perfect order. But all were deserted. Two doors were gone from the interior of one of the vessels. They might have been removed for any of a hundred reasons—but why here?
Nat's glance swept the room, came to rest on the figure of a heavy duty robot of familiar design. Semi-human in form, it looked like some misshapen, bent, headless giant. He inspected it: Meyers Robot, Inc. Earth designed for mining operations on Mars.