As he slowly cruised above the Crêpe Ring, with his binoculars to his eyes, Timkin munched a sandwich and now and then took a swig of coffee. In all their explorations of other worlds earthmen had never found any beverage better than time-honored coffee, though the Martians tried hard to sell a green-tinted product called tukka.
Timkin's hand gave a little jerk, and his binoculars wavered. Watching him one would have thought he had spied something exciting—like gold. But it was something else, almost equally as startling....
"Another Jetabout!" Timkin murmured. "Gave me a start, seeing it so suddenly."
It was a rare event when two wandering Jetabouts happened to cross paths in the vast area of the rings, almost like two explorers in the heart of Africa meeting each other. Timkin grinned humorlessly.
"Another chump!" he thought. "He wouldn't have a bonanza, or he'd be streaking back for Titan. He's cruising and looking for something like me."
Timkin flashed his heliograph, reflecting the light of Saturn, at the other ship. An answering greeting flashed back. Timkin watched it as it kept going on its course and slowly faded into distance. He felt less lonely for a moment.
Timkin went back to his scanning of the ring bodies with his glasses. He saw another lump of coal but was too wearied at the thought of donning his vac-suit for it, and let it go by under him. It was not till a minute later that he snapped to attention. For now he remembered, belatedly, that he had also seen a yellow glow near the black coal.
"Day-dreaming, that's what I was!" he yelled, hastily braking and spinning the Jetabout around. "If that was gold, and I don't find it again, I'll...."
It was not easy to backtrack in the rings, and find a certain spot you had passed over. The rings were constantly in motion, in their orbit around Saturn. And each body in the rings had its own private motion in respect to the others. Some gyrated fantastically around others.
A huge body might in turn exert enough gravitation of its own to hold smaller bodies in its grip, and force them to become its "moons." And these satellites then perturbed nearby bodies, causing them to weave and shuttle within the ring.