Murdoch applied heat forward and moved the ship gingerly ahead.
"What are you doing now?" Waverill demanded.
Murdoch glanced at the blind man. "Trying to find a clear spot, sir, so I can see into the place."
"What for? Why don't you just contact them?"
"Just being careful, sir. After all, we don't know much about them." Murdoch kept the annoyance out of his voice. He had his own reasons for wanting a preliminary look at the place, though the aliens had undoubtedly picked them up thousands of miles out and knew exactly where they were now.
Something solid, possibly a rock imbedded in the ice, bumped along the hull. Murdoch stopped the ship, then moved on more slowly.
The viewscreens brightened. He stopped the drive, then turned off the heat forward. Water, milky with vapor bubbles, swirled around them, gradually clearing. In a few minutes it froze solid again and he could see.
They were not more than ten feet from the clear area carved out of the ice. Murdoch had the viewpoint of a fish in murky water, looking into an immersed glass jar. The place was apparently a perfect cylinder, walled by a force-field or whatever held back the ice. He could see the dark translucency of the opposite wall, about fifty yards away and extending down eighty or ninety feet from the surface. He'd only lowered the ship a third that far, so that from here he looked down upon the plain one-story building and the neat lawns and hedges around it.
The building and greenery occupied only one-half of the area, the half near Murdoch being paved entirely with gravel and unplanted. That, he presumed, was where they'd land. The building was fitted to the shape of its half-circle, and occupied most of it, like a half cake set in a round box with a little space around it. A gravel walkway, bordered by grass, ran along the straight front of the building and around the back curve of it. The hedges surrounded the half-circle at the outside.
There was an inconspicuous closed door in the middle of the building. There were no windows in the flat gray wall.