For a moment everything was still and John good-naturedly surveyed the grotesque caricatures of human beings that surrounded him. "Well," John finally commented candidly, "at least we are in agreement over what line of action to follow, which is more than I could say for a lot of human friends of mine." A blurred attempt at imitation followed.
Then abruptly it was dark. Just like that. Perhaps you have seen darkness fall in the tropics? Just ten or fifteen minutes of twilight and then it's dark. The thin atmosphere of Ganymede did not maintain twilight very long. John cursed a little as he backed his erratic way back to the ship, revealed only by the gleam of the stars on its rounded hull. He groped about for the tear in the surface of the glimmering shell, found it and tumbled hastily in to escape the terrible cold that was forming in the absence of the sun's heat. The pilot room was rapidly assuming the aspect of an underground cavern with long, gleaming icicles hanging from the top. John grumbled a bit, and then opened the door to the small supply room. Closed it quickly behind him and sat down on a box of canned beans. Funny, he reflected, that they had never been able to produce synthetic foods in feasible form. Perhaps habit was harder to change than the scientists had thought. People still liked their meals—solid. He reached out and switched on the feeble storeroom light which operated from an independent source. Its yellow glow brought back a comforting nostalgia. He dined frugally on a can of beans and some biscuits; turned the heating units of his suit up to 70 degrees, and dozed into fitful slumber.
Some indeterminate period later he awoke. His mind still a little numbed by sleep he slipped the catch on his helmet and threw it back in order to take advantage of the bracing effect the sharp, thin air of Ganymede had displayed on the previous evening. He was totally unprepared for the furnace-like blast of heat that swept across his exposed features. He stood for a moment, stupefied, while the oven-heat dried the juices of his face and started to take on a blistering effect. Comprehension dawned magically and he snapped back the helmet and breathed with distinct relief the air supplied by his space suit which was scientifically kept at a pleasant temperature. The explanation was simplicity itself. The air cover of Ganymede was so thin, and its cloudless skies so clear, that the sun, though distant, beat down like old fury itself. He opened the door that led from the supply room into the pilot room. The long, pointed icicles which had formed the previous night were gone. The only clue to show that they had once existed was a rapidly rising cloud of steam from the steel floor. His glassite helmet misted swiftly as he walked through the room, then cleared slowly as he stepped out into the full glare of the sun. He could not help but admire the potency of this yellow star, even from a distance at which it appeared hardly larger than a standard sized base ball.
He cupped one heavily encased hand over the top of his helmet to protect his eyes from the sun, and searched the skies thoroughly for any sign of a rescue ship. Sighting nothing he dropped his hand despondently to his side and stumbled thoughtfully along the rough terrain. His mind worked desperately, attempting to devise some feasible means of signaling the rescue parties which must, at this very moment, be combing the space lanes—searching for him. Some huge flare might be useful, but a simple glance about him revealed that the largest form of plant life, which might serve as fuel, were small grey mosses that grew on the underside of occasional outcropping rock formations. They were useless for anything but a tiny smudge fire. His mind turned back to his ship. Possibly there was something highly combustible aboard that might be used for a flare. His mind flitted thoughtfully over every item in the ship's supplies and retired with the conclusion that the anti-fire campaigns which had been conducted for so long on the inhabited planets were going too far! His only hope lay in the possibility that one of the rescue ships might briefly scan the surface of Ganymede with one of their telescopic vision plates and notice the gleaming wreck of his auxiliary space ship. That gave him an idea. Something he had once used in an old book. About a castaway on a desert island arranging rocks to spell out giant words in the hope that some passing airplane might see the message and land to investigate. Slim chance, but still nothing could be overlooked if he hoped for eventual rescue.
Swiftly he set about gathering rocks. He planned to form the simple four letter word HELP, with an exclamation point added for emphasis. So engrossed was he in his work that he scarcely noted the unusual volume of noise about him, or if he did notice it attributed it to the small slides caused by his unearthing rocks from their natural formation. Hours passed while he painstakingly formed the shape of an enormous letter "H," a letter fully a tenth of a mile long. Exhausted by the unaccustomed manual labor he straightened up a moment and cast an approving eye across the extent of his handiwork. A gasp rose involuntarily from his throat as a strange sight crossed his line of vision. The land about him fairly swarmed with the peculiar, bony creatures he had encountered the evening before, and as far as his eyes could see there stretched an uninterrupted series of H's, all exactly similar in shape, size and peculiarities of the original! And at the edge of each of the letters sat a puffing group of emaciated, leathery skinned Ganymedians! Their great, watery eyes blinking patiently and soulfully in his direction!
He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. It was impossible to proceed. In order to lay out another letter he would have to accomplish the tremendous task of removing all the other H's as well. He shuddered as he realized that he would have to repeat the process again and again until finally the one word help, with a string of exclamation points miles in length remained. Suddenly a thought struck him. Wasn't this seemingly endless row of huge H's sufficient to attract the attention of any searching party that happened to see it without going to the trouble, double trouble at that, of adding the rest of the letters that spelled out the word HELP? It seemed logical enough to him. With a distinct air of relief he turned away, his arduous task of the past few hours completed, thanks to these freakish creatures that inhabited this moon.
Again the beginning of the short twilight was progressing and the sun was settling rapidly in the sky—its glare and heat diminishing with each passing moment. The massive bulk of Jupiter above could be seen only as a long, thin, crescent that stretched one quarter of the way across the visible sky. He experimentally lifted his helmet an inch or two. A sharp gust of air scurried hurriedly around the contours of his face and slightly ruffled his hair. He threw the helmet all the way back and with exultation breathed in tremendous gulps of crisp, fresh air. For the first time that day his powerful frame rose to its full six feet of height and he stood statuesque, his shadow cast before him, a symbol of man against the cosmos.
Still, somehow his mind could not shift from the ever-present danger. Possible exhaustion of his food supply; the energy heating units of his space suit—of water. Once again his thoughts turned to the humor provided by the strange inhabitants of Ganymede. He called out sharply to one of them: "How are you old chap?"