"But, darling," he said, his tone cheerful, "you mustn't blame anyone. Who would have expected that a maverick meteor would come at us and displace us from our orbit? And who would have expected that the meteor would have collided first with the outer asteroids, and picked up a cargo of—those?"
He gestured toward the window, where a shadow had momentarily paused. By the light that shone through, he could see that the creature was relatively harmless-looking. It had what appeared to be a round, humorous face whose unhumorous intentions would be revealed only at the moment of the kill. The seeming face was actually featureless, for it was not a face at all. It had neither eyes, nor nose, nor mouth. The effect of features was given by the odd blend of colors. Almost escaping notice because of their unusual position and their dull brown hue were the stomach fangs, in neat rows which could be extended and retracted like those of a snake.
He noticed that Louise had shuddered again, and said, in the manner of a man making conversation, "Interesting, aren't they? They're rock breathers, you know. They need very little oxygen, and they extract that from the silicates and other oxygen-containing compounds of the rock."
"Don't talk about them."
"All right, if you don't want me to. But about us—you see, my dear, no one expected us to be lost. And even if the Lighthouse Service has started to look for us, it'll take a long time to find us."
"We have food, water, air. If not for those beasts, we'd last until a rescue ship appeared."
"But even a rescue ship wouldn't be able to reach us unless we kept the beam going. So far, we've been lucky. It's really functioned remarkably well. But sooner or later it'll go out of order, and then I'll have to go out and fix it. You agree to that, don't you, Louise, dear?"