He couldn't see anything, so he went out and around the corner of the shack, keeping low and sticking tight to the wall.
Now he could see a larger area of the mesa, softly but almost adequately lighted by the billion stars above the crystal-clear air.
He saw what it was that had fallen out of the sky.
It wasn't a bomb. It was a—plane? Call it a plane. Call it a rotary-thrust flying wing. Call it anything you want to, it was there, round and glimmering faintly against the drab rock. The boom and shock that had shaken him out of his bunk must have been the result of the thing pulling out of a steep dive at super-sonic speed.
He should have been relieved that this was so. Somehow Wyatt was not. He had a feeling. It was such a crazy feeling that he could not believe it, but he couldn't get rid of it either.
He stood still in the shadow by the corner of the shack and waited to see what would happen next.
A light came on with blinding suddenness, shining from the center of the queer plane. It showed up every pebble and stunted bush, every grain of the rock, the sun-bitten pre-fab wall, himself in his sock feet and rumpled khakis, standing stiffly with the gun in his hand.
A portion of the black outer rim of the round plane dropped down, unfolding into a stair.
Wyatt shouted, "What is it? Who are you?" His voice was thin and small in that vastness of windy air. "I have a gun," he shouted. "Come out slowly, with your hands up!"
The words sounded ridiculous even while he was saying them. But he had to put up some kind of a front, simply because he was scared. If he didn't he would have had to turn and run away.