Then he found them. In moments there was warmth, and then the gray satellite toward which he headed began getting larger with each passing second.
The ragged circle of the plain was unbroken for almost as far as he could see in the dim reflected light of the satellite's primary, save for recent fissures in its surface that had been caused by wrenching quakes during the failure of the Geejay, and occasional pockmarks left by the wandering bits of cosmic flotsam that had been ensnared by the surprisingly slight Callistan gravity. The plain on which he had touched down was ringed with low mountain chains that looked like giant dragon's teeth poised to impale him at any moment. And Jove itself looked weirdly tilted with its atmospheric bands now inclined steeply away from the horizontal. Its pale light cast eerie shadows across the plain; made the cracks in its surface and miniature craters deceptively large and small.
And there was no sign of human habitation, no artificial structure shone against the dark horizon, and it meant he would have to waste precious fuel, blasting in great leaps across the moon's not inconsiderable surface, looking. He was not even certain for what.
If Zetterman had intended to have him find this particular one of eleven satellites, then why had he not included grid co-ordinates of latitude and longitude? Or had the man been about to when death intervened?
Unless ... whatever artificial installation existed on the planet could be located with the same co-ordinates! It would be ingenious....
Rapidly, Jon envisioned a standard tri-dimensional system grid in his mind's eye; applied it to the satellite upon which he stood, substituting its ecliptic-apparent north-south axis and solar-apparent X and Y equatorial axes for the Z, X and Y axes of the standard celestial sphere. Applying Zetterman's co-ordinates, then, his direction would be generally north-northwest, to a point below the satellite's surface!
For a moment the thought sent his mind spinning back into confusion, and then he realized that by the standard spherical method of point determination, his chances would have been one in a theoretical infinity of arriving at a point exactly on the planetoid's surface.
The installation was subterranean, then, which was logical, but which made matters all the more difficult. Unless, of course, there would be some slight surface indication. God, if only Zetterman had lived an instant longer.
With a muttered prayer that his deductions and dead reckoning calculations were substantially more than empty rationalizations of desperation, Jon thumbed the power toggles of his suit pack and leapt lightly off across the planetoid's hostile surface. He would, of course, have to be right. For there was only a limited amount of oxygen left in his tanks, and his power would certainly not last forever.