Parker stood before a porthole.
"Hey, look, Captain! There's a streak of red, like a meteor. And there's another!"
Captain Wiley rose, looked out. "They're rockets. They're going to land. These people are highly advanced."
His face became grim. Below them lay a planet, an intelligent race hidden beneath clouds and darkness. What manner of creatures were they? How great was their civilization? What marvelous secrets had their scientists discovered? What was their food like, their women, their whiskey?
The questions darted endlessly through his mind like teasing needle-points. All these wondrous things lay below them, and here they sat, like starving men, their hands tied, gazing upon a steaming but unobtainable dinner. So near and yet so far.
He trembled. The emotion grew within him until it burst out as water bursts through the cracked wall of a dam. He became like Parker.
"Why should we wait?" he yelled. "Why must we land in their field? Parker! Prepare to release flares! We're going down! We'll land anywhere—in a street, in the country. We don't have to wait for orders!"
Parker bounced off his couch. Someone called, "Brown, we're going to land!"
A scurrying of feet, the rush of taut-muscled bodies, the babble of excited voices.
"We're going down!"