Gravity: eight-tenths Earth-norm.
“And we don’t have a spacesuit aboard,” Ramsey said.
“But it can’t be. It can’t. This is the home of proto-man. I know it is. But if I went out there I’d perish from cold in seconds and lack of air in minutes.”
“That’s right,” Ramsey said almost cheerfully. “So do I take the ship back up?”
“I hate you, Jason Ramsey. Oh, I hate you!” Margot cried. Then suddenly: “Wait! Wait a minute! What was that you were thinking? Tell me! You must tell me—”
Ramsey shook his head and tried to force the thoughts from his mind with doggerel. Ben Adam, he thought. Abou
Ben Adam, Humpty Dumpty, hurry, hurry, hurry, the only two headed get yours here the sum of the square of the sides is equal to the square of the hyper-space, no, mustn’t think that mimsy were the borogroves
and the momraths now what the heck did the momraths do anyhow absolute [p 118] zero is the temperature at which all molecular activity….
“What were you thinking, Ramsey?”
His mind was a labyrinth. There were thousands of discrete thoughts, of course. Millions of them, collected over a lifetime. But all at once he did not know his way through that labyrinth and his thoughts kept whirling back to the one Margot Dennison wanted as if, somehow, she could pluck it from his mind.