Had the contemptuous creatures come at last, as he had always supposed they would? Was his period of agonizing vigilance at an end? Could this be the final accounting he had anticipated so anxiously?
Enraged, he lumbered forward, his blaster extended rigidly before him, as though it were a lance.
III
Stewart dug out from under the miscellany of dislodged gear that had buried him in his acceleration couch.
"Good landing," he grumbled at McAllister, whose hands were still trembling at the controls, "—all six of them."
White-faced, Carol recovered her composure by releasing her hair from its free-fall net. "I wasn't sure," she whispered, "whether he was going to land or just play bounce."
Randall tested his legs. "Well, at least we are here."
He crossed over to the external view console and threw a switch. One of the screens flickered, then steadied with a wide-angle image of the sky, framed in the sweeping curvature of the horizon. Aldebaran, setting, was bisected by a serrate mountain range, while its fourth planet was rising in all its brilliant immensity.
More interested in their surface surroundings, however, Stewart brought another screen into play and aimed it at the ground. The lens swept across, then came back to focus on a silvery form that reared skyward beyond a nearby hill.