"You'll get them," said Kevin, and climbed into his vac-suit.
Incredibly, Steve found himself out on the bleak, desolate surface of Ganymede, walking with Kevin past the long, silent length of the Frank Buck. And here, outside the confining walls of their spaceship, the Ganymede-fear seemed stronger. Steve felt it as something palpable, clutching at his heart and constricting it, bringing sweat to his forehead and clouding the inside of his helmet with moisture.
Fear—of what?
Not of the frontier world itself, surely. Not of some unknown menace lurking out among the craterlets and ringwalls. No, for while Ganymede was not yet as familiar as Mars or Venus, mankind still had explored it extensively. There were the strange anthrovacs, animals which looked like over-sized and less brutish gorillas but which were not protoplasm creatures and which took their energy directly from sunlight and cosmic radiation. But that was all—no other life existed on Ganymede, and the anthrovacs on their frigid, airless world were something of an oddity.
Then what caused the fear? And was the fear responsible in any way for what had happened to Charlie?
"Hey, Steve—snap out of it!" Kevin's voice, floating in thinly on the intercom.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, Kevin. Sure. It's that fear, sort of gets you out here. You can't help it."
"I know. A ship seems to cut it off to some extent, boy. But it's around, lurking, waiting to get you."
"What do you mean, waiting to get you?"