No human had ever set foot on the surface, or breathed the air, of
Niflheim. To have done so would have been instant death; the air was a
mixture of free fluorine and fluoride gasses, the soil was metallic
fluorides, damp with acid rains, and the river was pure hydrofluoric
acid. Even the ordinary spacesuit would have been no protection; the
glass and rubber and plastic would have disintegrated in a matter of
minutes. People came to Niflheim, and worked the mines and uranium
refineries and chemical plants, but they did so inside power-driven
and contragravity-lifted armor, and they lived on artificial
satellites two thousand miles off-planet. Niflheim was worse than
airless; much worse.
The chief engineer sat at his controls, making the minor lateral
adjustments in the vehicle's position which were not possible to the
automatic controls. At his own panel of instruments, a small man with
grizzled black hair around a bald crown, and a grizzled beard, chewed
nervously at the stump of a dead cigar and listened intently. A large,
plump-faced, young man in soiled khaki shirt and shorts, with
extremely hairy legs, was doodling on his notepad and eating candy out
of a bag. And a black-haired girl in a suit of coveralls three sizes
too big for her, and, apparently, not much of anything else, lounged
with one knee hooked over her chair-arm, staring into the screen at
the distant horizon.
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