The landscape was a featureless, undulating sheet of ice that extended in every direction to merge into the gloom of a perpetual night. Overhead a diminutive Sun, barely more than just a bright star among millions, sent down its feeble rays to paint an eerie and foreboding twilight on the scene.
The huge shadowy shape of the ship soared upward to lose itself in the blackness above; arc lights set high on its side cast down a brilliant cone of whiteness, etching out an enormous circle on the ice next to where the ship stood. Around the inside of the periphery of the pool of light, several hundred spacesuited, eight-foot-tall figures stood four deep in unmoving ranks, their heads bowed and their hands clasped loosely before them. The area within the circle was divided into a series of concentric rings and at regular intervals around each ring rectangular pits had been cut into the ice, each one aligned with the center. By the side of each of the pits lay a metallic, box-shaped container roughly nine feet long and four feet wide.
A small group of figures walked slowly to the center and began moving around the innermost ring, stopping at each pit in turn and watching in silence while the container was lowered before moving on to the next. A second small group followed, filling each of the pits with water from a heated hose; the water froze solid in seconds. When they had finished the first ring they moved out to begin on the second, and continued until they were back at the edge of the circle.
They stood gazing for a long time at the simple memorial that they had erected in the center of the circle #151;a golden obelisk with an inscription on each face, surmounted by a light that would burn for a hundred years. And as they gazed, their thoughts went back in time to friends and faces that they once had known, and who could never again be more than memories.
Then, when the time had come, they turned away and began filing slowly back toward their ship. When the arc lights were turned out, only the tiny glow of light around the obelisk remained to hold the night at bay.
They had honored the pledge that they had made and carried with them through all the years that had brought them here, from another place, from another time.
Beneath the ice field of Pluto lay the soil of Minerva.
The Giants had come home to lay their dead to rest.