"And now we're going back onto the probability curve?" muttered Gilchrist. He shook himself. "No, damn it. I won't accept that till I must. There's got to be some rational explanation."
"Leakage in the pipes?" ventured Catherine.
"We'd know that. Nor does it account for the radiation. No, it's—" His voice twisted up on him, and he groped out a cigaret. "It's something natural."
"What is natural?" said Alemán. "How do we know, leetle creeping things as we are, living only by the grace of God? We 'ave come one long way from home." His vision strayed to the viewport with a kind of horror.
Yes, thought Gilchrist in the chilled darkness of his mind, yes, we have come far. Four and a half billion kilometers further out from the sun. The planet-sized moon of a world which could swallow ours whole without noticing. A thin hydrogen atmosphere, glaciers of nitrogen which turn to rivers when it warms up, ammonia snow, and a temperature not far above absolute zero. What do we know? What is this arrogance of ours which insists that the truth on Earth is also the truth on the rim of space?
No!
He stood up, shuddering with cold, and said slowly: "We'd better go see Dr. Vesey. He has to know, and maybe they haven't thought to check the radiation. And then—"
Catherine stood waiting.
"Then we have to think our way out of this mess," he finished lamely. "Let's, uh, start from the beginning. Think back how th-th-the heating plant works."