The ground shuddered under their feet as the ship leaped out into space with rockets blasting.
Gramp plodded doggedly along. He heard the hissing of the snow against his space suit. Heard it crunching underfoot. Heard the stumbling footsteps of the other two behind him.
Jupiter was lower in the sky. lo had moved away from its position against the darkened segment of the primary, was swinging free in space.
Before him Gramp saw the bitter hills, covered with drift snow, tinted a ghastly red by the flood of Jupiter-light.
One foot forward and now another. That was the way to do it. Keep plugging away.
But he knew it wasn't any use. He knew that he would die on Ganymede.
'Forty years ago I fit here and came through without a scratch,' he told himself. 'And now I come back to die here.'
He remembered that day of forty years before. Remembered how the sky was laced with fiery flame-ribbons and stabbing ray-beams. How ships, their guns silenced, rammed enemy craft and took them with them to the surface.
'We'll never make it,' moaned the senator.
Gramp swung on him savagely; a steel-sheathed fist lifted menacingly.