The Professor smiled. "Let's not worry what it is. The main thing is that the swamp ahead of us is now dry, and we can go ahead."
They went ahead. And a quarter mile ahead of them they found the ship.
It had been easier to locate than he had thought it would be. And once he saw the ship, a feeling of recognition swept over him.
Angel had halted and was saying in awe, "This ain't no plane."
It wasn't. It had been constructed to do more than skim the surface of a planet. It had been built to bridge the gap from one planet to the next, from one star to the next. Only fifty feet long, it was a thing of strength and beauty, with a dull smooth finish that could slip through an atmosphere with a minimum of friction. He was beginning to remember a great deal now. The entrance, he knew, was near the nose. The door closed tight after you went through it, leaving an apparently unbroken surface of metal, but if you came over to it and put your hand on a certain plate—
He came over to it and hesitated. The Professor asked eagerly, "Is this—is it a spaceship?"
"Yes. This is the door, over here. I must have crashed in the swamp and for some reason staggered out."
"But how—how does it work?"
"Like this."
He raised his hand to the plate, and suddenly the sense of danger swept over him again. And now he knew where it came from. Not from the ship itself. No, not from the ship. But from the Professor, the gentle little man who had been protecting him.