"I've had it right along," Crag confided.
They caught only a fleeting look at Arzachel before it rushed into the background. Crag touched the braking rockets from time to time, gently, precisely, keeping his eyes moving between the radar altimeter and speed indicator while the Chief fed him the course data.
The back side of the moon was spinning into view—the side of the moon never before seen by human eyes. Prochaska whistled softly. A huge mountain range interlaced with valleys and chasms pushed some thirty thousand feet into the lunar skies. Long streaks of ochre and brown marked its sides, the first color they had seen on the moon. Flat highland plains crested between the peaks were dotted with strange monolithic structures almost geometrical in their distribution.
Prochaska was shooting the scene with the automatic camera. Crag twisted around several times to nod reassuringly to Nagel and Larkwell but each time they were occupied with the side ports, oblivious of his gesture. To his surprise Nagel's face was rapt, almost dreamy, completely absorbed by the stark lands below. Larkwell, too, was quiet with wonder.
The jagged mountains fell away to a great sea, larger even than Mare Imbrium, and like Mare Imbrium, devoid of life. A huge crater rose from its center, towering over twenty thousand feet. Beyond lay more mountains. The land between was a wild tangle of rock, a place of unutterable desolation. Crag was fascinated and depressed at the same time. The Aztec was closing around the moon in a tight spiral.
The alien landscape drew visibly nearer. He switched his attention between the braking rockets and instruments, trying to manage a quick glance at the scope. Prochaska caught his look.
"Bandit's up on us," he confirmed.
Crag uttered a vile epithet and Prochaska grinned. He liked to hear him growl, taking it as a good sign.
Crag glanced worriedly at the radar altimeter and hit the braking rockets harder. The quick deceleration gave the impression of added weight, pushing them hard against their chest harnesses.
He found it difficult to make the precise hand movements required. The Aztec was dropping with frightening rapidity. They crossed more mountains, seas, craters, great chasms. Time had become meaningless—had ceased to exist. The sheer bleakness of the face of the moon gripped his imagination. He saw it as the supreme challenge, the magnitude of which took his breath. He was Cortez scanning the land of the Aztecs. More, for this stark lonely terrain had never felt the stir of life. No benevolent Maker had created this chaos. It was an inferno without fire—a hell of a kind never known on earth. It was the handiwork of a nature on a rampage—a maddened nature whose molding clay had been molten lava.