“So you prefer to believe that something down on the surface prevents inspection?” Jim Tillek asked wryly. He leaned back in his seat, easing shoulder muscles taut from hours of bending and peering through magnifiers. “I can’t credit that explanation, Ez. C’mon, man. How can anything on that planet be functioning? The surface has been frozen. It can’t have thawed appreciably in the time it’s been swinging in to Rukbat.”

“One does not have such regular formations on any unpopulated surface. I don’t say they can’t be natural. They just don’t look natural. And I certainly won’t make any guesses about what sort of creature made them. Then look at the thermal level here, here, and here.” Ezra jabbed a finger at the pics he had been studying. “It’s higher than I’d anticipated on a near-frozen surface. That much we got from the one probe that sent data back.”

“Volcanic action under the crust could account for that.”

“But regular convex, not concave, formations along the equator?”

Jim was incredulous. “You want to believe that plutonic planet could be the source of this attack?”

“I like that better than substantiating the Hoyle-Wickramansingh theory, I really do, Jim.”

“If Avril hadn’t taken the gig, we could find out what that nebulosity is. Then we’d know for sure! Hoyle-Wickramansingh or little frozen blue critters.” Jim’s tone was facetious.

“We’ve the shuttles,” Ezra said tentatively, tapping his pencil.

“No fuel, and there isn’t a pilot among those left that I’d be willing to trust to do such a difficult retrieval. You’d have to match its orbital speed. I saw the dents on the Mariposa’s hull myself where the defense shields failed. Also, we didn’t bring down any heavy worksuits that would protect a man out in a meteor storm. And if your theory’s correct, he’ll get shot down.”

“Only if he gets too close to the planet,” Ezra went on cautiously. “But he wouldn’t have to, to get a sample of the trail. If the trail is nothing but ice, dirt, and rock, the usual cometary junk, we’d know then that the real menace is the planet, not the trail. Right?”

Jim eyed him thoughtfully. “It’d be dangerous either way. And there’s no fuel to do it anyhow!” Jim opened his arms in a gesture of exasperation.

“There is fuel.”

“There is?” Jim sat bolt upright, eyes wide with surprise.

Ezra gave him a wry smile. “Known only to a chosen few.”

“Well!” Jim made his eyebrows twitch, but he grinned to show that he took no offense at having been excluded. “How much?”

“With a thrifty pilot, enough for our purpose. Or maybe, if we can find Kenjo’s main cache, more.”

“More?” Jim gawked. “Kenjo’s cache? He scrounged fuel?”

“Always was a clever driver. Saved it from his drops, Ongola said.”