... and in those others that were his ...
It was time for his stint on radar. Benning handed him the headset gratefully. "Krotzer's still sending," he said. "Awful to listen to. Whatever they are, they're doing something to his bubble. He thinks they may be in soon. I hope to Christ we get there."
"What do you think they are, anyway?"
"Beats me," Benning answered. "Looks like you'll see some grade-A monsters your first time out, you lucky boy." An unconvincing smile crossed his face, which like all their faces was dead white from months of being away from anything like sunlight. "A lot of lousy things can happen in space. I hope we get less than our share of them."
Bailey snugged the headset over his ears. The voice of Krotzer was weaker. Bailey pictured him crouched in his bubble, his radar broken and only fit for sending, wondering if any lonely ship at all was hearing him, and if it was, if it would arrive in time. Krotzer had a wife, and a child he had never seen.
Now he was talking about the things outside the bubble. "I never saw anything like them. In fact, I can't see them. Can't exactly. You can see them with your feelings, somehow—hooded sort—and beginning to come through...."
He broke off, started again. "This is Captain Krotzer of the Galileo. We have crashed on Katherine Two, satellite of Saturn, continental area. Something has killed five of us. Chan Lee and I are living in the bubble. Cannot receive you on disabled radar. Besieged."
He stopped. The headphones were silent except for the uncanny snickering static of deep space. They sometimes called it "laughter." It was not good for the nerves. It was as though space itself were cackling at them, thought Bailey. Get off that. Think about something else.
He remembered Krotzer well, an expert on extra-terrestrial life, a man with a face mingling sensitivity and courage. He had lectured once at Prelim. Bailey remembered some of it. Almost imperceptible, living crystals that swarmed in the air of one planet. They got into your system, converted your matter, and you suddenly crumbled into a heap of the same kind of crystals. And the unknown life of the planet Caliban, called the Shunned Planet because of some influence that reached out and sucked ships down by doing something to the minds of the men. And the singing smoke droves. And the dissolvers. And others.