“Down with moderate speed, please. It is not possible to see too far, and I’d like to get down to where real details are visible. It seems to be mountainous country — I’ll try to guide you in landing me near some peak, so that I can observe for a reasonable distance from a stable spot.”
“All right. You’re going down.” Two or three minutes passed silently; then Ken spoke again.
“Are you moving me horizontally?”
“No. You are already away from over the transmitter— three or four miles.”
“Then this atmosphere has stronger currents than I expected. I am drifting visibly, though not rapidly. It’s rather hard to specify the direction — the sun is not very far from straight up, and the torpedo hides it.”
“When you’re nearly down, give me the direction with respect to the torpedo’s orientation. I’ll stop you before you touch.”
Gradually details grew clearer. The greenness seemed to be a tangled mass of material somewhat resembling chemical growths Ken had prepared in various solutions; he tentatively identified it as plant life, and began to suspect what had caused the crackling sound when the test torpedo had been landed.
Standing out from the green were areas quite obviously of bare rock. These seemed to be located for the most part at and near the tops of the mountains; and with infinite care Ken directed his distant pilot in an approach to one of these. Finally, hanging motionless twenty feet above a surface which even in this relatively dim light was recognizable as rock, he gave the order to lower away.
Six feet from the ground, he had the machine stopped again, and carefully released the leg chains. The lower part of his armor dropped, almost touching; a word into the microphone brought the metal feet into contact with the ground. Releasing one of the upper chains caused him to swing around, still leaning at a sharp angle with one side up toward the supporting hull. By a species of contortionism he contrived to make a workable tripod of his legs and the rear prop of the armor, and at last released the final chain. He was standing on the Planet of Ice, on his own two feet.
He felt heavy, but not unbearably so. His extreme caution not to land in a recumbent position was probably well founded — it was very unlikely that he could have raised himself and the armor to a standing posture with his own muscles in this gravity. Walking was going to be difficult, too — possibly even dangerous; the rock was far from level.