（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - The Coldest Plac.doc

THE COLDEST PLACE Larry Niven In the coldest place in the solar system, I hesitated outside the ship for a moment. It was too dark out there. I fought an urge to stay close by the ship, by the comfortable ungainly bulk of warm metal which held the warm bright Earth inside it. See anything? asked Eric. No, of course not. Its too hot here anyway, what with heat radiation from the ship. You remember the way they scattered away from the probe. Yeah. Look, you want me to hold your hand or something? Go. I sighed and started off, with the heavy collector bouncing gently on my shoulder. I bounced too. The spikes on my boots kept me from sliding. I walked up the side of the wide, shallow crater the ship had created by vaporizing the layered air all the way down to the water ice level. Crags rose about me, masses of frozen gas with smooth, rounded edges. They gleamed soft white where the light from my headlamp touched them. Elsewhere all was as black as eternity. Brilliant stars shone above the soft crags; but the light made no impression on the black land. The ship got smaller and darker and disappeared. There was supposed to be life here. Nobody had even tried to guess what it might be like. Two years ago the Messenger VI probe had moved into close orbit about the planet and then landed about here, partly to find out if the cap of frozen gasses might be inflammable. In the field of view of the camera during the landing, things like shadows had wriggled across the snow and out of the light thrown by the probe. The films had shown it beautifully. Naturally some wise ones had suggested that they were only shadows. Id seen the films. I knew better. There was life. 2 THE COLDEST PLACE Something alive, that hated light. Something out there in the dark. Something huge . . . Eric, you there? Where would I go? he mocked me. Well, said I, if I watched every word I spoke Id never get anything said. All the same, I had been tactless. Eric had had a bad accident once, very bad. He