“Some of us, if you want to believe Tolider. You and me, that’s what the government trades to get new information.”

“That makes even less sense if we want to believe Tolider. We winners are a talented group, but we’re not that special. If Earth had been repopulated to the point where they could explore the stars again, they’d have thousands like us.” “Tolider told me that we are an unusual group. Rumor says it’s the first time for many games that all the top five in the Planetfest games are

‘troublemakers’ — he couldn’t define the term for me.”

“I think I can. We won’t take answers without digging for ourselves. That’s one reason I feel so comfortable with the rest of you.”

“I’ll accept that. So let me point out one other thing. You can tell me what it means. The contestant groups for surface visits to Glug and Bedlam and Crater and Camel and the other planets were all some random mixture of all twenty-five winners. But look who’s here on Whirlygig: Sy, me, you, Kallen, and Lum — the top five, all ‘troublemakers,’ plus Rosanne and Wilmer. I think Rosanne can be classed as a wild one, too, difficult to control — your hair would curl if I told you some of the things she’s done. And we all wonder about Wilmer. We’ve been specially picked for this trip, and I’m worried about what might happen here.” Peron moved their suits closer together so that he could see her face. He realized she was genuinely worried, not just joking. He reached across to take her suit glove. “Relax, Elissa. You’re as bad as Tolider, all wild surmises. They wouldn’t bring us all this way to dispose of us on Whirlygig. If we are that much nuisance we could have been chucked out of the contest back on Pentecost, and nobody would ever have suspected a thing.” He laughed. “Don’t worry. Now we’ve landed we’re safe enough on Whirlygig.”

They had made good progress. The north pole would soon be in sight. And in less than an hour, Peron would know the falseness of his final words.

The dome was a hemisphere of tough, flexible polymer, roughly twenty meters across. It was located on the exact axis of rotation of the planet. That axis was highly tilted to Whirlygig’s orbit plane, so at this time of year the golden sun of Cassay was permanently invisible, hovering down over the other pole. Only the weak companion, Cassby, threw its ruddy glow across the landscape, providing adequate light but little heat. There were no free volatiles on Whirlygig, but the surface temperature at polar midwinter would be cold enough to liquefy methane.

Peron and Elissa had been too engrossed in their conversation to make the best speed from the equator, and they arrived last. The others were already landed, clustered around the dome. Sy, Lum and Rosanne were inspecting the entry airlock, without touching any part of the door. Kallen and Wilmer were away around the back, on the opposite side of the dome, looking at something on the wall.

Elissa stepped close to see what Sy was doing. “Problems?”

Lum turned and nodded. “Wondered when you two would get here. Problems. Maybe we won’t have a pleasant night out of our suits after all.”

Sy was still crouched over by the door. He seemed rather pleased to be faced with the new challenge.

“See, here’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said. “There’s an airlock with an inner and outer door. The outer door, this one here, has a fail-safe on it, so it won’t open when there’s any gas pressure in the airlock. First you have to pump out the lock to near vacuum, and you can do it from outside. That’s this control, on the outside wall. When we arrived, there was atmosphere in the airlock, so naturally it wouldn’t open. We pumped it out — the pumps work fine — but it still won’t open.”

“Motor failure?” asked Peron.

“Could be. The next step is to try to open it manually. But we want to be sure we know what we’re doing. Over on the other side of the dome there’s a big patch of black sealant. Suggests there was a meteor impact, and the self-repairing system took care of it. But we don’t know what that may have done to the inside until we get there. And we don’t know how much damage the mechanical systems may have suffered. Maybe the meteor hit the lock, too. We’ll have to get in and find out.”

Peron stepped forward to peer at the door. It appeared quite intact. “You’re sure there’s no pressure now in the airlock?”

“Positive. The gauge there is working. It showed pressure when we arrived, and as we pumped it went down to zero.”

“So it should be safe enough to open manually,” added Lum. “We were preparing to do that when you two arrived. Come on, another pair of hands may help a lot.” The outer door of the lock gave grudgingly, as Sy, Lum, and Peron jerked hard at it. Finally it was about halfway open, almost enough to admit a person. “My turn now,” said Rosanne. “I couldn’t be much use in the tugging and heaving part, but I’m thin enough to get in there where you fatties can’t, and see what’s going on. Give me room.”

She came to the lock door, turned sideways, and began to crab carefully into the opening.

Peron was standing just behind her. He heard Sy’s warning yell at the same moment as the thought came into his own head. Idiots! If we know the outer door isn’t working right, why assume that the controls for the inner one are any better?

He leaned forward, took Rosanne around the waist and with one movement propelled her back and sideways, away from the open outer door of the lock. He heard a gasp of surprise and annoyance over her radio as Rosanne skittered away across the silver-and-brown surface. Then before he could follow her, a great force took him and drove him end-over-end across the jagged rocks.

Even as he was jerked and battered inside his suit, his own thoughts remained quite clear. The inner door seal must have been already broken, ready to fail and hanging on a thread. So long as there was an equalizing pressure in airlock and dome, there was no problem. But once they had pumped down the pressure in the lock, the inner door had tons of air pressure exerted upon it. If it failed, all the dome’s gases would be released in one giant blow-out through the lock. And for anyone standing in the way…

Peron was spinning and ricocheting from one rock formation to the next. He felt three separate and shattering collisions, one on the chest, one on the head, and one across his hip. Then, quite suddenly, it was over. He was lying supine on the surface, staring at the ruby orb of Cassby and surprised to find that he was still alive.

The others came crowding round him, helping him to his feet. He was amazed to see that he was almost fifty meters away from the dome. Rosanne had picked herself up and was waving to show that she was all right.

“I’m all right, too,” said Peron.

There was a long, strange silence from the others. At last Peron noticed a faint, ominous chill on the lower left side of his abdomen. He looked down. His suit there was dreadfully buckled and splintered from chest to thighs, and over his abdomen it showed white instead of the usual metallic gray.

“Air supply working, but he’s lost two tanks.” That was Lum, his voice oddly distorted, from behind him. The suit radio had taken a beating, but it still functioned after a fashion.

“No problem, he can share ours.”

“Motor controls look all right.”

“Food containers gone.”

“We can cover for that.”

“Oh-oh. Thermal system is out. And most of the suit insulation is stripped from the lower torso.”

“That’s a worse problem.”

His radio’s distortion was so bad that Peron found it hard to identify the speakers. He cut to a privacy mode. While they inspected the condition of his equipment, his own mind raced on ahead of them.

Evaluate the options.