Buckling a para-ray to my belt (for I did not think heavier weapons were necessary in this peaceful looking scene), I stepped to the door of the ship and forced it open. At my feet the swamp oozed and gurgled. A scant distance away the bank of solid ground lay. I leaped the distance and I am proud to say misjudged it by a mere foot or so. Dragging myself out of the thick gummy mess I clambered to the bank of the strangely greenish soil, placed one foot forward, scowled, and raised my right hand.
"I hereby take possession of this land in my name, Ajax Calkins, and proclaim it subject to my will as Emperor." This I pronounced with firm dignity becoming a Magellan or a Cortez.
You may seem surprised that I should make myself ruler of this land and not merely annex it to the Interplanetary Union? Why should that surprise you? Was it not mine by right of priority? And how, indeed, do you think kingdoms and empires are won?
I am not a modest man. I have always said that I am a man of great destiny. Why should I bow to traditions?
Having satisfied my will, I looked about.
Before me stretched a long rolling plain, green as if covered with fields of grass. Yet it was not grass but a curious green hard clay that seemed to make up the soil. Far to the distance low hills rose. The oddest feature of the soil was the fact that it was interminably interlaced with deep sharp cracks like a clay that had been baked improperly and cracks all over.
It seemed to me that there was a strange discoloration far off in the base of the hills from which white and grey plumes of vapor arose as if marking the factories of some hillside city. A city it could well prove to be and if that were so, then I had found a capital and subjects!
I set out to walk the several miles to the hills. I had sufficient equipment for such a reconnoiter already on me.
The going was not easy. The ground was flat and hard enough to walk on, but the deep cracks and narrow crevices which one constantly came across made the trip difficult. I would have to leap perilously over the more narrow cracks or else carefully find a way around the wider ones.