Brandon swore and snapped off the set. He looked at his walk-around bottle.
“Can’t stay here any longer,” he muttered.
He couldn’t find the capsule. He walked three, perhaps four miles. He stopped and blotted his moist brow with his sleeve. He wasn’t going to find it. Before him stretched an endless carpet of red dust. The light from the two moons was growing dim, as each settled toward different horizons.
He sat down. A cloud of powdery dust settled over his legs. The lightness in his head told him that his oxygen was running out. The weakness in his muscles reminded him that it had been a long time since he had walked in a planet’s gravity. A distant flare lit up the horizon. He choked off a sob, and beat his fist in the red dust. A wave of nausea swept over him. Bitter stomach juices welled up in his throat but he swallowed them down again.
Desperately he turned on the tele-talkie.
“Astro, this is Brandon,” he said.
“Brandon, this is Astro,” Reinhardt said.
Brandon’s body tensed. “Thank God I finally got through to you. Listen, Reinhardt, I must be about three—”
“Brandon, this is Astro,” said Reinhardt in a monotone. He said it again and again and again.
Brandon fell back on the [p27] ground. His breathing was short, strained. His face was bathed in perspiration. The oxygen, he realized, was giving out.