"Sir?" said a man at the airlock of the ship.
Peters looked up swiftly, and identified the speaker as the technician for the Contact mechanism.
"How's it going?" he asked, trying to keep his voice matter-of-fact.
"First report's just come in," said the man, with a brief smile. "Information's being coded onto a new card for the roborocket index. I guess Norcriss came through the Contact all right. His life-pulse still shows on the panel. It was flickering badly for a few minutes, though. Think I should terminate?"
Peters hesitated, then shook his head. "No, I guess not. They tell me there are no after-effects to even a hazardous Contact. Norcriss'll be wanting to get on with it ... poor devil," he added, with a wry smile that touched only his lips, didn't reach his eyes. "Proceed, seaman."
The other man nodded, and vanished within the ship....
IV
Vast flat fields of sun-bronzed stone stretched in all direction to the horizon, pockmarked with rimless craters, seething with red liquid which flickered with dusty blue fingers of fire here and there on its surface. Every so often a pale plume of steamy white rose toward the coppery overturned bowl that was the sky.
Cautiously Jerry sniffed the air. Sulphur. That was the red liquid burning in those many pits: Yellow sulphur melted into gluey scarlet pools amid the nearly invisible shimmer of its consuming fires.