asked Barn reasonably. “I don’t, but it’s where you pick up wing ice in Earth’s atmosphere, and it had the same effect!” “You’re blaming it for what happened?” came Maria’s quiet voice. “Well, not yet.” GO6 was sometimes soft-pedaled, but it was seldom completely ignored. “Can you get a lab up there, Art?” “I doubt it. They weren’t designed to climb a smooth surface.” “That skin’s hardly smooth anymore.” “All right. I’ll try.” The colonel followed up the words with action, and for over fifteen minutes sent one of his devices rolling and clawing its way along various upward-leading wrinkles in the crumpled fuselage. Each, sooner or later, narrowed enough to spoil his grip and let the machine topple back to the ground, undamaged in Titanian gravity but ineffective. Goodall finally gave up. Belvew, less skilled but more anxious, tried from some time himself, with no better luck. “It looks as though some of the stuff has fallen off,” Inger pointed out at last.
