Boom Harlow was gone, then, riding a jetted metal triangle high against the thin murk. The rest of us were left with the creeps and the wonder, and all the work we had to do.
There was an ancient shelter of glassy rock, metal-lined, and once sealed, for there was an airlock. A dried, age-blackened form, its claws clenched, its queer, vertical ribs sticking through the skin, was crumpled in one corner of the shelter. Around him was his gear—tools and weapons like those in museums. Perhaps no one had dared to take them, for a curse was supposed to be here.
But you could tell that he had been moved; and the even cones of dust on the floor showed that every bit of it had been carefully sifted, no doubt after prospector Jeffers had found that tiny box of glinting tools. He had shown the box to reliable people; but then, by later report, had somehow lost it.
The mummy was an Xian. With what sadness at the loss of a home world, had he awaited death under the bleak sky of Ganymede?
None of us spoke. At last Jan kicked dust over the corpse in a gesture of kindness.
"It may be safer in the ship," I offered.
Scharber and Bowhart had the Intruder, and the simpler wants of the rest of us to look after. Doc, Jan, and I kept working on the smaller micro-robots. But during an occasional spare hour we'd send our half-inch alter-bodies out into the cold to look around the ancient camp. We found nothing of interest except a splinter of diamond set in a metal shank. A cutting tool?
But within a month, certain phenomena began to appear inside the ship itself. As humans, we couldn't have noticed. But being half an inch high, it was different.
"Whispers in dark corners, and shadows that move," Jan said. "And tinkles. Or are spatial solitudes affecting my mind?"