“Not to me it can’t”, rumbled Grag.
“Curt didn’t mean you — he meant us humans”, gibed Otho.
“Listen, plastic-puss”, Grag began wrathfully. “I’m twice as human as you and —”
“That’s enough”, Newton rapped. “You can carry on that old argument some other time.”
They went on and the unseen escort went with them. Soon they encountered the end of the Belt.
Black calcined soil, smoking rocks, a wave of dull heat from the ground itself attested to the awful heat of the Sun whose single great ray once each day traveled across this strip of Vulcan’s interior.
They made Captain Future feel again the terrible power of the gigantic solar orb so close by that could reach in through a single loophole and wreak this flaming devastation where it touched.
They crossed the end of that blackened strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon gliding ahead.
Before them the fern jungle rose into olive-colored hills, growing dark as the dusk deepened. Almost at once Newton noticed something on the slope of the nearest hill. It was a raw lumpy scar where a landslide had recently occurred.
“Simon, look at that landslide! Notice anything?”