"Run north and circle the planet again midway between the equator and the pole,” Thorn ordered Stilicho.
"It's kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, hunting one ship on a whole world,” Stilicho muttered.
"This world isn't big. We'll sweep every mile of it if necessary,” John Thorn declared.
Soon they were again circling Erebus, midway between the equator and the northern pole. Before they had gone far, Gunner pointed to a black speck on the northern desert horizon.
"Something odd about that black mountain yonder!” he reported from the ‘scope eyepiece. “It has none of the shining haze over it — the only place I've seen here that hasn't."
"Steer toward it, but keep high,” John Thorn told the old pirate.
"We'll take a look."
The black speck on the horizon expanded rapidly as the ship rocketed north. It grew into a big black mountain that loomed in solitary majesty out of a wide expanse of the haze-wrapped desert. brooding beneath the star-flecked dark sky.
It was a mountain almost perfectly dome-shaped, the regularity of its outline startling. It was two miles across at the base and a mile in height. It stood out bold and black because none of the shining blue haze hovered over it.
"Queer, the symmetrical shape of that mountain,” Sual Av muttered. “Is it possible that it is—"