Johnny stood there, blaster in hand, looking around, eyes sharp behind his faceplate. He saw nothing but flat, grayish-red ground, a scattering of stone outcroppings large and small; nothing but the star-clouded black of space above the near horizon, and the small sun of the system riding a low hillock like a beacon.
"Blue light," he said thoughtfully. "Green light. Red and purple lights. And a mess of crazy colors we never saw before. Whatever those flashes were, honey, they looked artificial to me...."
Helen frowned. "We were pretty far off-world when we saw them, Johnny. Maybe they were aurorae—or reflections from mineral pockets. Or magnetic phenomena of some kind ... that could be why the ship didn't handle right during landing—"
Johnny studied the upside-down dials on the protruding chest-board of his spacesuit.
"No neon in the atmosphere," he said. "Darned little argon, or any other inert gas. The only large mineral deposits within fifty miles are straight down. And this clod's about as magnetic as an onion." He gave the surrounding bleak terrain another narrow-eyed scrutiny. "I suppose it could have been some kind of aurora, though ... it's gone now, and there isn't a sign of anything that could have produced such a rumpus." He looked around again, then sighed and finally holstered his blaster. "Guess I'm the worrying type, hon. Nothing alive around here."
"I wonder what that sound was."
"Probably a rock falling. This area's been undisturbed for God knows how many million years ... the jolt of our landing just shook things up a little." He grinned, a little sheepishly. "As for the landing ... I was so scared after that meteor hit us, it's a wonder I didn't nail the ship halfway into the planet, instead of just jolting us up."
Helen looked up at the three-foot hole in the side of the ship.
Johnny followed her gaze, and grunted. "We'd better get to work." He turned to the ladder that led up to the airlock. "I'll rig the compressor to charge the spare oxy-tanks ... we'll have to delouse this air of ammonia, but otherwise it's fine. Look, honey, I won't need any help; why don't you get busy on a PC?"
Helen nodded, still staring up at the meteor-hole. "You know," she said slowly, "it wouldn't happen again this way in a million years, Johnny. Thank God, this clod was here ... we ought to name it Lifesaver."