"That's right. Maybe there's an entrance, somewhere. But I don't know. We may be a thousand years too late, Steve." His gaze clung to the crystal.
It pulsed triumphantly. Pale flame lanced joyously from it. Alive it was; Arnsen had no doubt of that now. Alive, and exulting to be home once more.
Years too late? There was not the slightest trace of any artifact on this airless planetoid. The bleakness of outer space itself cast a veil over the nameless world. The three men plodded on.
In the end, they went back to the ship.
The quick night of the tiny world had fallen. The flaming corona of the sun had vanished; stars leaped into hard, jeweled brilliance against utter blackness. The sky blazed with cold fires.
Lifeless, alien, strange. It was the edge of the unknown.
They slept at last; metabolism was high, and they needed to restore their tissues. Hours later Arnsen came to half wakefulness. In his bunk he rose on one elbow, wondering what had roused him. His mind felt dulled. He could scarcely tell whether or not he was dreaming.
Across the ship a man's head and shoulders were silhouetted against a port, grotesquely large and distorted. Beyond, the stars blazed.
They moved. They swirled in a witch-dance of goblin lanterns, dancing, whirling, spiraling. Blue, yellow, amethyst and milky pearl, streaks of light golden as the eye of a lioness—and nameless colors, not earthly, made a patterned arabesque as they danced their elfin saraband there in the airless dark.
The dark swallowed Arnsen. Slumber took him....