Joel filled the flagon and emptied it a second time. He went back to the windows, the liquor bottle and flagon still in his hands.
To most men, he supposed, the panorama that spread for miles from the stern of the up-ended White Whale would be a thing of sheer beauty. It would be hard for them to believe that there existed other planets far beyond the rim of their own hostile Solar System which could equal or exceed the soft beauty of the oasis they called Earth. But there it was—gently-rolling, golden desert beneath a temperate, dark-gold sun, flanked at one gently curving edge by a forest that looked as though it had been scientifically planned and landscaped for beauty. It was a big forest that covered a full third of the planet, and at its opposite edge it gave way to twelve thousand miles of unblemished shoreline which descended into gleaming, azure ocean.
And in the forest, on the ocean, even on the wide expanse of desert, there were people. Intelligent, strong, peaceful, quiet people, who might have been natives of Earth's Pacific islands of three centuries ago, save that their flesh was lighter in tone; their sun was not as young as Sol.
Farmers, mostly, Carruthers had reported. Some merchants, some travelers and explorers, even some men of a very young science, but, mostly, farmers ... it was the way they lived. A good way, Joel thought. A good way, in a good place.
He looked through the fore-waist bridge windows, and what he saw was beautiful.
But he filled the flagon again.
A buzzer sounded softly from the compact secondary control console which banked a full third of the bridge's fore bulkhead, and deliberately, Joel let it buzz a second and a third time before he fingered the stud that slid the small metal door open behind him. He turned as they came through it.
Fatigue and sweat lined Sam's thin face; Dobermann was audibly out of breath. Southard had to duck slightly to get into the room, but when he straightened he seemed as fresh as when the party had left the ship seventeen days before.
Joel returned their salute with the full flagon still in his left hand, and then beat Carruthers to the punch.
"All right, so we've hit it one more time! Bully for us—" He drained the flagon, reached for the bottle.