All were watching him intently, through the vitrolite panels. Paula clasped her hands in nervous anxiety. Bill saw the Prince step confidently out, sniff the air as though testing it, and take a few deep breaths. Then he drew his legs beneath him and made an astounding leap, that carried him twenty feet high. He fell in a long arc, struck on his shoulder in a pile of loose red sand. He got up, gasping for air as if the effort had exhausted him, and staggered back to the air-lock. Quickly he sealed the outer door behind him, opened the valve, and raised the pressure.
"Feels funny," he said when he opened the inner door. "Like trying to breathe on top of a mountain—only more so. The jump was great fun, but rather exhausting. I imagine it would be dangerous for a fellow with a weak heart. All right to come out now. Air is still cool, but the rocks are getting hot under the sun."
He held open the door. "The guards will come first."
Six of the thirty-odd members of the crew had been detailed to act as guards, to prevent surprise. Each was to carry two rocket torpedoes—such a burden was not too much upon this planet, with its lesser gravity. They would watch from the cliffs at the edge of the little plateau upon which the sunship had landed.
Bill and four other men entered the air-lock—and Paula. The girl had insisted upon having some duty assigned to her, and this had seemed easier than the mining.
The door was closed behind them, the air pumped out until Bill gasped for breath and heard a drumming in his ears. Then the outer door was opened and they looked out upon Mars. Motion was easy, yet the slightest effort was tiring. Bill found himself panting merely from the exertion of lifting the two heavy torpedoes to his shoulders.
With Paula behind him, he stepped through the outer door. The air felt chill and thin. Loose red sand crumbled yieldingly under their feet.
They separated at the door, Bill starting toward the south end of the pleateau, Paula toward the north point, and the men going to stations along the sides.
"Just lie at the top of the cliffs and watch," the Prince had ordered. "When you have anything to report, flash with your ray pistols, in code. Signal every thirty minutes, anyhow. We will have a man watching from the bridge. Report to him anything moving. We will fire off a red signal rocket when you are to come back."
He had tried to keep Paula from going out, but the girl had insisted. At last he had agreed.