Asteroid of Fear RAYMOND Z. GALLUN The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort.
In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was—bitter.
His two kids, Bubs, seven, and Evelyn, nine—clad in spacesuits that were slightly oversize to allow for the growth of young bodies—were both bawling. He could hear them through his oxygen-helmet radio-phones.
Around him, under the airless sky of space, stretched desolation that he’d of course known about beforehand—but which now had assumed that special and terrible starkness of reality.
At his elbow, his wife, Rose, her heart-shaped face and grey eyes framed by the wide face-window of her armor, was trying desperately to choke back tears, and be brave.
“Remember—we’ve got to make good here, Johnny,” she was saying. “Remember what the Homesteaders Office people told us—that with modern equipment and the right frame of mind, life can be nice out here. It’s worked on other asteroids. What if we are the first farmers to come to Vesta? … Don’t listen to those crazy miners! They’re just kidding us! Don’t listen to them! And don’t, for gosh sakes, get sore …”
. . .
