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it. At best. All right…” He bent down and told Slicky to take a position downslope of the two of them.
    Manuel liked the first hour. It gave him rest and he became used to the utter silence. An occasional faint ping came as a grain of dust, falling in from some askew orbit around Jupiter, struck his suit, making it ring. The unending hail of high-energy protons could not reach him, though, through the tight-wound magnetic fields that blanketed his suit, the superconducting coils with their eternal currents brushing aside the deadly sleet. Old Matt had taught him how moving would in turn make magnetic ripples in the iron-rich rock nearby, faint surges that the Aleph could pick up, and so he stood absolutely still. Ganymede was swinging more into the sun now, and as he waited the dawn came on with infinitesimal slowness, gradually brightening the blue drifts of snow and pushing back the shadows. Above, the dark sky absorbed everything and would not yield. This high the atmosphere that man and his machines labored to bring had no effect and the land was as it had been for billions of years, inert and cold beyond any human sensing, yet with slow inevitable forces of its own that thrust up mountains and tortured the ice. It was in the third hour now and he was becoming tired, even though he had his knee servos on lock and was not carrying his weight at all. The boy felt he could sense the potential in the bulging rock beneath him, and the gathering strength it brought to even this high a place.
    Only slowly did it come to him that the tremor and silent pressure was not from his thinking but was real, steady. He blinked and the rock was rising, shifting. Old Matt was a distant figure that had long ago blended into the terrain but now was waving, pointing at the bulge that grew in the ice sheet, and Slicky moved nervously, one foot forward and another back as the first crack came, a jagged line drawn quickly across the purple ice, widening even as it spread, snow tumbling in, and then a second crack and a third, as fast as he could see. Rock groaned under him and he brought up the double-bore, but there was nothing to aim for. The land had risen a full meter now. Pebbles and then boulders began to roll, slowly and then faster and then crashing down, smacking the ice and keeping on, some falling into the spreading web of cracks that split and popped and split again, boulders now tumbling into the fissures and wedging there. The growing yawning blackness echoed the emptiness of the dark sky. Manuel turned, holding the useless gun. He leaped out of the way as the rock split under him with a deep-bass snapping sound. Old Matt was struggling down the slope, trying to keep his balance. The boy yearned for a target, something to act against. Slicky yelped and chippered and began to run, away from the growing bulge that centered on the triangle made by the three of them.
    Manuel stepped cautiously forward, toward the bulge. The land groaned and heaved, nearly throwing Manuel from his feet. He smelled the hot, coppery scent. Fresh gaps raked across the ice sheet and he leaped to avoid one. Slicky ran, its back to them, and did not see the crack coming. Blackness rushed under the slipping, frantic form and in one instant had consumed it, swallowing the steel and ceramic as though it were nothing and then moving on, the cracks stretching down the shallow ravine like ever-lengthening arms. And then—stopped. The grinding hollow noise that the boy had not separated from the other sounds now abruptly faded, and the ice ceased its motion, pausing, and with aching slowness then began to settle, subside, stones crashing again as it tilted, gaps narrowing, the bulge sinking back.
    In a few moments it was gone. Manuel stood with his gun high and ready and waited, breathless, but there was nothing more. The fissures did not close up fully. He was still wary, studying the ground near him, when Old Matt picked his way to him and touched