It was an anticlimactic return—Yuri hardly said anything. I told myself he felt embarrassed. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with him, to say the least. I did a lot of hiking out to visit sensor packages, glad to be on my own. By sundown Wednesday we were heading south and angling back toward the base. There’s no true night on Ganymede because Jove hangs there, beaming down a hundred times brighter than Earth’s full moon. After all, it fills 250 times as much of the sky as Luna does from Earth. So night is really a sort of yellowish twilight; the jagged valleys turn beautiful and spooky all at once. All they need is a moaning wind and an abandoned castle or two, to complete the eerie picture. We shambled into the base late Thursday night, a little behind schedule and tired. Zak was standing outside waiting for us, along with the mechanic who would check out the Cat to be sure we hadn’t hot rodded her to death.
