MOSS

66.

Trevize looked grotesque in his space suit. The only part of him that remained outside were his holsters—not the ones that he strapped around his hips ordinarily, but more substantial ones that were part of his suit. Carefully, he inserted the blaster in the right-hand holster, the neuronic whip in the left. Again, they had been recharged and this time, he thought grimly, nothing would take them away from him.

Bliss smiled. “Are you going to carry weapons even on a world without air or—Never mind! I won’t question your decisions.”

Trevize said, “Good!” and turned to help Pelorat adjust his helmet, before donning his own.

Pelorat, who had never worn a space suit before, said, rather plaintively, “Will I really be able to breathe in this thing, Golan?”

“I promise you,” said Trevize.

Bliss watched as the final joints were sealed, her arm about Fallom’s shoulder. The young Solarian stared at the two space-suited figures in obvious alarm. She was trembling, and Bliss’s arm squeezed her gently and reassuringly.

The airlock door opened, and the two stepped inside, their bloated arms waving a farewell. It closed. The mainlock door opened and they stepped clumsily onto the soil of a dead world.

It was dawn. The sky was clear, of course, and purplish in color, but the sun had not yet risen. Along the lighter horizon where the sun would come, there was a slight haze.

Pelorat said, “It’s cold.”

“Do you feel cold?” said Trevize, with surprise. The suits were well insulated and if there was a problem, now and then, it was with the need for getting rid of body heat.

Pelorat said, “Not at all, but look—” His radioed voice sounded clear in Trevize’s ear, and his finger pointed.

In the purplish light of dawn, the crumbling stone front of the building they were approaching was sheathed in hoar frost.

Trevize said, “With a thin atmosphere, it would get colder at night than you would expect, and warmer in the day. Right now it’s the coldest part of the day and it should take several hours before it gets too hot for us to remain in the sun.”

As though the word had been a cabalistic incantation, the rim of the sun appeared above the horizon.

“Don’t look at it,” said Trevize conversationally. “Your face-plate is reflective and ultraviolet-opaque, but it would still be dangerous.”

He turned his back to the rising sun and let his long shadow fall on the building. The sunlight was causing the frost to disappear, even as he watched. For a few moments, the wall looked dark with dampness and then that disappeared, too.

Trevize said, “The buildings don’t look as good down here as they looked from the sky. They’re cracked and crumbling. That’s the result of the temperature change, I suppose, and of having the water traces freeze and melt each night and day for maybe as much as twenty thousand years.”

Pelorat said, “There are letters engraved