They went on down the face of the giant, looming wall. Trehearne pointed suddenly. "Isn't that a ledge?"
The hard bright edge of the beam cut across a shelf of rock that jutted out halfway down the cliff. Quorn swung the skiff in closer. Something on the ledge glistened dully under the light. Quorn let the skiff drop with a sickening rush. Detail sprang clear—shattered rock, ancient magma, puddles of frozen air in the hollows. And among them an ovoid shape, symmetrical, smooth, giving back a metallic glint.
Edri said the name of Orthis, as though it were a prayer.
TWENTY
Quorn had set the skiff down on the ledge. They had scrambled into pressure suits. They had forgotten that they were already three-quarters dead. Awkward in the clumsy armor, stumbling on the jagged rock, slipping on the patches of frozen air, they clawed their way toward the goal they had crossed a Galaxy and gambled their lives to find. Above them the ghastly cliff leaned outward against nothingness, below them the abyss plunged down into the dead heart of a world. Beyond them was a spreading desolation, and in the black sky the awful rim of the Galaxy lay like a blazing sword of light.
Trehearne was aware of the silence. He had never been on an airless world before. He felt the impact as his metal boot struck against a shard of rock, but it made no sound. All he could hear was the harsh breathing of Quorn and Edri, transmitted to him by the helmet audio.
The ship of Orthis loomed before them, lightless, lifeless, cradled in the ashes of destruction. It had a look of patience. It had lain here for a thousand years, untouched by time or rust, entombed in silence and the endless night, eternal as the dead suns that rove forever in uncorrupting space. It seemed that it could wait until the end of the universe, cherishing its trust. Awe came upon Trehearne, and with it a kind of fear.
They found the lock port. It stood wide open, the valves still clean and shining. There could be no corrosion here, with every atom of air and moisture frozen in the purifying cold. The light of Trehearne's belt-lamp showed him, on the floor of the lock chamber, the scored marks of a man's boot. They might have been made only yesterday.
The three men paused outside that open port. They looked at each other through the glassite plates of their helmets, and their faces were strange. Then Trehearne stepped aside, and Quorn also. Edri bent his head. He moved forward to the port. Slowly, without sound, he clambered into the ship of Orthis.