"What is it?" asked Circe, her voice wild with fright. "Pink, darling, what is it? Are you hurt?"
It was Circe who was holding him. Sobbing with relief, he said into the radio, "No, no, baby, I'm fine, I'm wonderful."
Her answering cry was a tiny sound of joy and affection. "I wish I could kiss you," she said, "but there are two spacesuits in the way."
He found her hand and squeezed it hard. "I wish I could see you, Smitty," he said, "but either I'm blind or—"
"Oh, I should have told you at once. I turned off our chest-lamps."
"But where are we?"
"Not far from where you fell." Her hand was a comfort in his, as much so as a squad of Space Marines marching down to greet them would have been. "You flew past me like a kicked football, Pink, and I veered off to see if you were okay. When you fell and didn't move, the first thing I did was snap off the lamps. About a second afterwards, the giants went past. They have a weird kind of glow in the dark. I think they could have seen us—certainly they don't exist blind in this ink-pool—but there's a ridge of rock and we were pretty well hidden behind it. I dragged you about forty feet and found this hole and we've been lying here ever since."
"The others," he said, remembering.
"I've been in touch with Daley all the time. He and Calico ran into a lot of trouble and Calico got a broken leg. Joe Silver took him back to the ship. Daley and Jerry found each other and fought off a horde of giants. Every man got all his bottles full of 'specimens' and then used up most of his lead. Sparks—" she hesitated a moment—"Sparks is dead. So is Randy Kinkare."
Pink said quietly into the dark, "I don't think Randy would mind that. He didn't have much of a face left."