Jak again took his place at the recorders, while his mother was at the cameras. Jon set the ship into a quartering circle, and when he had located the direction in which the analyzer showed the strongest indications of the enigmatic metal, swung into that course.
They had gone less than five hundred miles when they noticed a reddish glow in the distance. As they came closer, they saw that ahead and below was a terrific, whirling mass of colored gas.
"Wow, look at that storm!" Jak yelled. But he could not help adding, "Did you ever see anything more beautiful?"
"Better get well above it, hadn't you?" Mrs. Carver asked anxiously. "It looks dangerous."
"I'm sure not going through it." Jon was already lifting the ship. "But 'Annie' says the stuffs right close."
At five miles high he leveled off and put the ship into a narrowing spiral. From that vantage point they could see that the storm was a purely localized affair, perhaps some twenty miles in diameter.
"Wonder what makes those colors?" Jak called from the telescopic-visiplate into which he was staring.
"Suppose it could be a volcano?"
"Could there be volcanic action on so cold a planet?" their mother asked in astonishment.
"I don't see how there could be," Jak answered slowly, "but that certainly looks like flames of some sort down there."