Manly Wade Wellman

“ Outside, the sled lay ready under the frigid sky. Wofforth tramped around it, leaned over and poked the load.
"Too much," said his voice in their radios. "Keep the synthesizer, the tent, these two ration boxes. Wait, keep the crowbar and the hatchet. Dump the rest."
"We travel that light, sir?" said Jenks doubtfully.
"I've been figuring," said Wofforth. "We're on the far side of Pluto from Base Camp. That makes ten thousand miles, more or less. Pluto's day is nineteen hours and a minute or so, Earth time. We can travel only by what they humorously call daylight. ”

“ He grinned mirthlessly. "I can figure what you're figuring, lieutenant," he went on, with a touch of Jenks' sly manner. "You die, young and brave. You'll shave up again before you lie down and let go. And when the next shipload arrives there'll be you, lying like a statue of your good-looking young self, frozen stiff. Am I right?"
Corbett was right, Wofforth admitted to himself. The man was more than a great meaty lump, after all, to see another man's unspoken thought so clearly. ”

“ Speeding toward it, he steered by the line around his waist while he cut his engine. He came close at fifty miles an hour, almost a crawl.
Some ancient volcanic action had thrown up those mountains, like a rank of close-drawn sentries. The sled could not cross them anywhere. Still reducing speed, Wofforth drew close to a notch, but the notch gave into a crater, a great shallow saucer two miles in diameter and filled with shadows below, so that Wofforth could not gauge its depth. Opposite, another notch—perhaps once the crater had been a lake, with water running in and out. ”

“ We dream after we die."
A hand was cupped behind his neck, lifting him to a sitting position. He felt warm fluid at his lips. "It's no dream," said the voice beseechingly. "Look at me."
"I don't dare. The dream will go away." ”

“ He was lying in darkness, with a low, steady hiss of oxygen in his ears. He rolled over weakly, got to his feet. He turned on his helmet light. He was propping up a gray cave of metal foil, that fell in stiff creases all around him. At his feet were the bodies of Jenks and Corbett. Both were dead.
After a while, clumsily, painfully, he dragged the two corpses free of the tent. He found the heater and thawed a hole in the frozen surface, big enough for both. He tumbled them in, then undercut the edges of the hole with the heater, so that chunks fell in and covered them. ”

“ They'll expect us to reach Base Camp and hold it down for the next attempt to reach Pluto."
"We know why," repeated Jenks. "And that's not why, lieutenant. Let me talk, sir. It's a dead man talking."
"You won't die," snapped Wofforth. "I'll get you both there alive."
He stepped to where, in one corner, he had managed a bath—a hollow in the frozen ground, lined by pushing the floor fabric into it. From the heater he ran tepid, clean water into it. He clipped a mirror to the tent foil, searched out an automatic razor, and began to shave his own dark young thatch of beard. ”

“ Thinking of how he had crossed the crater, Wofforth shuddered.
"Pluto is colder than anybody even guessed—outside. But inside are the internal fires—like all the solid planets. We made our tests and we can tap them. I kept the instruments for that. It means we'll have power, and can make our synthetic foods and so on for as long as we need them. ”

“ At the rear they set a salvaged engine unit. For steering, they rigged a boom shaft to warp the runners right or left. For cargo, they piled the sled with full containers, ration boxes, the foil tent, what instruments they could detach and carry, armfuls of heat-tools, a crowbar, a hatchet, a few other items. ”