Dawn of the Demigods

by Raymond Z. Gallun

Accelerating with the help of the pressure, we swept around Ganymede in an orbit; we waited until our direction reversed itself, as must always happen in circular motion. Then we really built up velocity with long bursts from our rods, and tangented sunward, breaking our last tie with the Jovian moon. We were on our way.

I felt my hide stiffening defensively. Over long periods we were not entirely without need of shelter in the awful spatial dryness, so we kept watch. The void is not completely empty. It contains many scattered hydrogen and helium atoms, and a rarer sprinkling of cosmic dust. We were lucky. Gleaming like a planet reflecting solar light, we saw a lump of rock moving with us toward the sun. We jetted to it and clung, laughing silently in the vacuum.

Doc's lips formed the words: "More speed. Time is short. Use up the cartridges of the rods. We have more."

Any object, broken clear of the gravity of a planet or large moon, is free in space. Acceleration is resisted then only by inertia. A relatively small force can build velocity enormously.

We were traveling at many miles per second when Doc mouthed: "Not too much. Eventually we must apply the brakes."

We fused our way into the meteor with our rods, and hollowed it out. We closed the exit with the slag of our excavations. True, the sun's radiations were a source of energy to our android tissues; but they also hastened drying—our worst enemy here since our body fluid was water.

As time went on, our skins hardened further, forming a kind of shell around the moisture in our vitals. And we had a small supply of water in steel cylinders. In a pinch, we needed little. We had food, too, similarly packed—Xian gelatins containing the radioactive and other minerals necessary to sustain protoplastic flesh, and give it a sure energy source in space.

While we were burrowing into the meteor Jan did a whimsical thing. With a diamond-chip tool she inscribed over the entrance of our cave:

"Dr. Shane Lanvin and Charles and Janice Harver traveling to Earth in the Miniature—2037 A.D."

"There," she said in silent lip motion, for the reading of which we were gaining practice. "Maybe the inscription on that quartz-grain meteor you used to carry, Doc, was just as casual. Maybe it was carved, just on the spur of the moment, recording a journey of little Xians."