"Strap down," Captain Torkel said. "This is it. We're going to land."
Then he said the words again in his mind: This is it. This is the world that will give death or life to humanity, madness or sanity to us.
The midnight blackness of space dissolved into gentle twilight as the Star Queen slid into the atmosphere of Kelly's Planet. The grumble of the jets became audible and then swelled until it was like a rebirth of the thunderous sound of an April takeoff more than six years ago.
Captain Torkel switched on the second layer of bow jets, braced himself in his crash-chair. Despite the effects of the deceleration compensator, his face was swollen and distorted. It was as if the soul was bubbling out of his body.
He realized that he should have commenced deceleration some ninety minutes ago. But he had forgotten.
The image of the planet broadened in the magni-screen. It filled the screen, then seemed to spill out of it. Captain Torkel beheld an expanse of blue which, in a silent explosion, was transformed into the cerulean calm of a sea. The blue was swept away. The brownish gold of mountains stabbed briefly upward, faded into the shadowy green of rushing forest. Then came the glassy green of a meadow.
The Star Queen paused, shaking with vibration. Its nose arched upward.
The Star Queen landed with an almost imperceptible thump. The atomic engines spluttered, coughed, died. The men unbuckled themselves, tested their limbs, slid off their chairs. They moved to the portholes like frightened old men treading on slippery ice.
They looked out.