As the board flashed a warning of outside pressure, he brought the vessel to a halt and looked hopefully at his employer. Drai made a downward gesture with the gun muzzle. Lee shrugged in resigned fashion, switched on the heaters in the outer hull, and began feeling his way into the ocean of frigid gas, muttering in an undertone and putting on an I-told-you-so expression every time a clink told of contracting outer plates.
Feth, knowing he would get no further chance at the radio, glued his attention to one of the ports. One of Drai’s eyes did likewise, but no change appeared in his expression as the evidence began to pile up that Ken had been telling the truth. Great mountains, hazy air, green vegetation, even the shiny patches so suggestive of the vast blue plains where the flatlanders had downed the exploring torpedoes; all were there, as the scientist had said, dimly illuminated by the feeble sun of this system but clearly visible for all that, Feth, heedless of the gun in Drai’s hand, suddenly leaped for the door, shouting, “Camera!” and disappeared down the corridor. Drai put the gun away.
“Why can’t you be like those two?” he asked the pilot. “Just get them interested in something, and they forget that there’s anything in the universe to be afraid of.” The pilot made no immediate answer; apparently Drai expected none, for he strolled to the port without waiting. Then without looking up from his controls the pilot asked sourly:
“If you think Ken is interested in his job and nothing else, why are you so anxious to check up on him all of a sudden?”
“Mostly because I’m not quite sure whose job he’s doing. Tell me, Lee, just who would you say was to blame for the fact that this is the first time we’re landing on this world which we’ve known about for twenty years?”
The pilot made no verbal answer, but one eye rolled back and met one of his employer’s for a moment. The question had evidently made him think of something other than frostbite and cracked plates: Laj Drai may not have been a genius, as he had been known to admit, but his rule-of-thumb psychology was of a high order.
The Karella sank lower. Mountain tops were level with the port now; an apparently unbroken expanse of green lay below, but the compass pointed unhesitatingly into its midst. At five hundred feet separate trees were discernible, and the roof of the Wing home showed dimly through them. There was no sign of Ken or his torpedo, but neither being in the control room doubted for an instant that this was the house he had mentioned. Both had completely forgotten Feth.
“Take us a few yards to one side, Lee. I want to be able to see from the side ports. I think I see Ken’s armor — yes. The ground slopes; land us uphill a little way. We can see for a fair distance between these plants.” The pilot obeyed silently. If he heard the shriek of Feth, echoing down the corridor from the room where the mechanic was still taking pictures, he gave no sign; the words were rendered indistinguishable by reverberation in any case. The meaning, however, became clear a moment later. The sound of the hull’s crushing its way through the treetops was inaudible inside; but the other token of arrival was quite perceptible. An abrupt cloud of smoke blotted out the view from port, and as Laj Drai started back in astonishment a tongue of flame licked upward around the curve of the great hull.
18
Feth was not the only one who called to the pilot to hold off. Ken, realizing only too clearly that the hull of the vessel would be nearly as hot as his own suit in spite of its superior insulation, expressed himself on the radio as he would never have done before his pupils; but of course no one on board was listening. Mr. Wing and Don, guessing the cause of his excitement, added their voices; Mrs. Wing, hearing the racket, appeared at a window in time to see the glossy black cylinder settle into the trees fifty yards above the house. No one was surprised at the results — no one outside the ship, at least.