Gilchrist rubbed chilled fingers together. Blast it, the air was still cooling off! "It'd be interesting to land a ship on Nep himself and check the geology," he said. "A catastrophe like that would leave traces."
"When they can build a ship capable of landing on a major planet without being squeezed flat by the air pressure, that'll be the day. I think we'll have to settle for telescopes and spectroscopes for a long, long time to come—"
The girl's voice trailed off, and her dark fine head poised. The loudspeaker was like thunder.
"DR. VESEY! DR. VESEY! PLEASE CONTACT ENGINEERING OFFICE! DR. VESEY, PLEASE CONTACT DR. JAHANGIR! OVER."
For a moment, there was silence in the bar.
"I wonder what the trouble is," said Alemán.
"Something to do with the heating plant, I suppose—" Again Catherine's tones died, and they stared at each other.
The station was a magnificent machine; it represented an engineering achievement which would have been impossible even fifty years ago. It kept a hundred human creatures warm and moist, it replenished their air and synthesized their food and raised a wall of light against darkness. But it had not the equipment to call across nearly four and a half billion kilometers of vacuum. It had no ship of its own, and the great Corps vessel would not be back for three years.
It was a long way to Earth.