Skirting the shiny, wet ships were long, grass-covered bunkers, the place where the ground crews took cover. The dead, water-soaked grass was slippery, hard to get a foothold on; but Pirx was in too much of a hurry to bother hunting for the nearest crossing. He took the grassy slope in one leaping charge—and feasted his eyes on her.

She stood alone, tall as a steeple, surpassing all others in height. An obsolete giant. He picked his way among the puddles on the concrete, the puddles soon tapering off where the water had been instantly evaporated by the thermal blast, until the rectangular slabs rang out hard and crisp under his feet as after a summer dry spell. The closer he got, the farther back went his head. The ship’s armored hull looked as if it had been plastered with glue, then buffed with mud-caked rags. An attempt had obviously been made to reinforce the tungsten shield with carbide asbestos fiber. And with good reason. Ships of that mass could have their hulls ripped to shreds—literally skinned—by the heat of air friction during atmospheric reentry. And stripping it did no good, either; the process just repeated itself, so horrendous was its aerodynamic drag. As for its stability, its maneuverability… it was downright criminal, a matter for the Cosmic Tribunal.

The suitcase was getting heavier, but Pirx took his sweet time, the itch to inspect the ship carefully from the outside being much too powerful to resist. The gantry stood etched against the sky like Jacob’s ladder; everything was coated the same dull gray: the hull, the empty crates strewn about on the concrete, the metal cylinders, the rusty scrap iron, the coils of metal hose… The random chaos testified to an expeditious loading. When he was within twenty paces of the gantry, he put down his suitcase and surveyed the launchpad. Hm, cargo already aboard, he thought, seeing the huge mobile loading ramp standing less than two meters from the ship’s hull, its grappling hooks dangling in midair. He circled the steel hold-down clamp being used to anchor the ship—now a soaring black tower against the crimson dawn—and stepped under the skirt. The concrete around the base of the clamp sagged under the tremendous weight, with cracklike fissures radiating in all directions.