"More visitors?" The plaintive query came from Nagel. Crag shook his head negatively.
"We've got arms," Prochaska broke in confidently. He grinned "We'll elect you Commander of the First Arzachel Infantry Company."
"This rocket isn't manned."
"No?"
"It's a warhead," Crag said grimly, "a nuclear warhead. If we're not underground when it hits...." He left the sentence dangling and looked around. The masked faces were blank, expressionless. It was a moment of silence, of weighing, before Larkwell spoke.
"Okay," he said, "we drop her into the hole."
He turned back and gazed at Red Dog. Nagel didn't move. He kept his eyes on Crag, seemingly rooted to the spot until Prochaska touched his arm.
"Come on, Gordon," he said kindly. "We've got work to do." Only then did the oxygen man turn away. Crag had the feeling he was in a daze.
They worked four hours beyond the regular shift before Crag gave the signal to stop. The cables had been fastened to Red Dog—the winches set. Now it was poised on the brink of the rill, ready for lowering into the black depths. Crag was impatient to push ahead but he knew the men were too tired. Even the iron-bodied Larkwell was faltering. It would be too risky. Yet he only reluctantly gave the signal to start back toward Bandit.
They trudged across the plain—five black blobs, five shadows plodding through a midnight pit. Crag led the way. The earth overhead gleamed with a yellow-green light. The stars against the purple-black sky were washed to a million glimmering pinpoints. The sky, the crater, the black shadows etched against the blacker night bespoke the alienage of the universe. Arzachel was the forgotten world. More, a world that never was. It was solid matter created of nothingness, floating in nothingness, a minute speck adrift in the terrible emptiness of the cosmos. He shivered. It was an eery feeling.