"How do you know?" Garth replied. "Surprising thing, but there often is air, a thin sort, on asteroids this large—deep down in the crevices. I've even seen various kinds of moss, lichen, and other sparse growth on some of these rocks. Come to think of it, that might conceivably serve as food. You know—to men who cling tenaciously to life?"
Prokle shuddered at the thought. He said, "Well, shall I take the light side and you the dark? That way we could circle this rock in a couple of hours."
"Wait a minute!" Garth said severely as Prokle started off. "You haven't worked a rock this size before. First we're looking for that missing life-boat and not for a gold or platinum vein—remember that. Second, we work only on the dark side, because it's safer. Yes, I mean it. On a rock this size there's always a certain bombardment of fragments—some no larger than your fist. Over here we can see 'em coming, on the light side we can't. I'm cautious on this point because the first partner I ever had out here went that way with a hole smashed clear through him. Now, you take the left, I'll take the right, keep always on the side away from the sun by working away from the direction of rotation."
As Prokle moved away Garth called a final instruction: "Contact me every once in a while, and watch the chasms especially for that light."
Prokle was just a little resentful as he moved away. Much as he liked Garth, he sometimes didn't like his dictatorial manner. As for any of that missing party being left alive here—it was sheerly fantastic. They were wasting time which they might be putting to better and more personal advantage.
Prokle looked into the blackness and saw two tiny points of light moving swiftly toward him. He ducked involuntarily. But the meteoric fragments passed high above his head, and he turned in time to see one and then the other hit on a pinnacle far behind him. He decided suddenly that Garth was right on that point, at least.
He came to a chasm and peered down into stygian blackness. No light there. He muttered disgruntedly and leaped far across to the opposite edge, limned by the faint tinge of starlight. He stopped and looked back and Garth was already out of sight below the rock's ragged horizon. He forged cautiously ahead, leaping chasms and skirting pinnacles and stumbling over dangerously sharp rocks.
Prokle stopped at his eighth or ninth chasm and scanned the utter blackness. Still no light. Why should there be? Fantastic to think a human being could subsist on this place for three weeks. Prokle muttered to himself in ever-increasing sullenness. He hated this derelict rock and this blackness and Garth and—
Then without faintest warning the white flash of a ray spurted up from the depths, past Prokle's left ear, and hung for a moment against the darkness of space. It vanished. And just as Prokle, in his surprise, stumbled backward and fell prone, it spurted up again to burn the lip of the cliff at his feet. Then all below was dark again.