Neptune Crossing

his suit. Next he lifted his arms, then his legs. No problem there. But when he attempted to push himself up to a sitting position, he found that he was glued in place, stuck to the ice. The pain hit him in the neck, as before, but this time it seemed an ache rather than a stabbing pain. A bruise, probably, from the suit collar. Good. Bruises he could handle; it was broken bones and spinal damage that scared him. He scissored his legs, trying to roll over. He might as well have tried rolling out from under an anvil.

He gazed up at the ceiling, trying to evaluate his predicament. He had never been in a cavern quite like this before. The ceiling was a flawed bluish ice with a tinge of reddish-orange methane coloration. It was at least fifteen or twenty meters above him. The walls, also ice, were steep and slick. They were still wheeling around him, and it made him dizzy to try to focus on them for longer than a moment or two. Nevertheless, he glimpsed, as it revolved past, an almost vertical trough in th