"Ease her up, Astro," shouted Tom. "Easy! Ease her up, you Venusian clunk, we're dropping too fast!"
Once again, from the heart of the Polaris, there came a roaring blast of the powerful motors. The ship steadied once more and then slipped back into her fall toward the new planet under more sure control.
"Fifty feet," reported Alfie. "Forty—thirty—twenty—"
There was a brief pause, as if everything had stopped and they were held still by a giant hand, and then, suddenly, a rocking motion, a slight bump and rumble. Tom knew they were down.
"Touchdown!" he yelled at the top of his voice. "Touchdown! We made it—we made it!"
From the power deck, quiet except for the whining of the oxygen feed pump, Astro's bellow could be heard vibrating through the passageways.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooowwwwwww!"
Tom began shutting off the many circuits and switches and made a quick last-minute check of the now dead ship. Satisfied, he glanced at the great solar clock, noted the time in the log, and stepped to the ladder leading to the radar bridge.
"Cadet Corbett reporting, sir," said Tom, saluting smartly. "I wish to report, sir, that the Polaris made touchdown on the planet Tara at exactly seventeen fifty-nine, solar time!"
Connel, his great bulk bent over the tiny transmitter, was twirling the dials, his head encased in a vacuum earphone helmet to ensure perfect silence. He had acquired the knowledge of lip reading out of necessity on the power decks of the old chemical burners thirty years before, and while he couldn't hear what Tom had said, he knew what the report was.