She walked slowly over the hull to the cargo lock and, while she did, Jordan reeled in the telecom viewers. The lock was no sooner closed to the outside and the air hissing into the compartment than Jordan was there, opening the inner lock.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She flipped back the helmet. There was frost on her eyebrows and her nose was a bright red. "Of course. My hands aren't a bit cold." She stripped off the heated gloves and waggled her fingers.
"It can't be!" protested Cameron. "You should be frozen stiff!"
"Why?" asked Anti, laughing. "It's a matter of insulation and I have plenty of that."
Cameron turned to Docchi. "When I was a kid, I saw a film of a dancer. She did a ballet, Life of the Cold Planets, I believe it was called. For some cockeyed reason, I thought of it when Anti was out there. I hadn't thought of it in years."
He rubbed his hand fretfully over his forehead. "It fascinated me when I first saw it. I couldn't get it out of my mind. When I grew older, I found out a tragic thing happened to the dancer. She was on a tour of Venus and the ship she was in disappeared. They sent out searching parties, of course. They found her after she had spent a week on a fungus plain. You know what that meant. The great ballerina was a living spore culture medium."
"Shut up," growled Jordan.
Cameron didn't seem to hear. "Naturally, she died. I can't remember her name, but I've always remembered the ballet she did. And that's funny, because it reminded me of Anti out there—"
A fist exploded in his face. If there had been more behind the blow than shoulders and a fragment of a body, his jaw would have been broken. As it was he floated through the air and crashed against the wall.