came out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of the
lock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly
heavy in the ship's gravity-field. There were two spacesuits and a
curious assortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside his
faceplate, and said briskly, "This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it,
will you, Maril?"

He began to work his way out of his own vacuum-suit.

"Item," he said. "The ships are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practical
tribe, the Wealdians! The ships are ready to take off as soon as
they're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat
enough to keep a ship warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively
near zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this."

He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where
their beams played. But the metal spacesuits glistened and steamed,
and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and
utterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, which
re-evaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and was
immediately replaced.

"Item," said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suit
sleeves. "The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping
friends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble,
provided only that nobody comes out here to bother us before they
leave."

He shed the last of the spacesuit, stepping out of its legs.