The space ship quivered under the impact of the rockets. And Rawson noticed a queer thing about that vibration—it was normal in itself, but it was never intended to occur on a glassy cliff that sloped into a quicksand.
The vibration loosed the pull of gravity of the ship—its steadiness on the ridge—it slipped sideways.
It slipped sideways into the quicksand.
The space ship moved sideways over the edge of the cliff and started to sink beneath the lake of quicksand.
As the bottom half of the hull disappeared below the surface of the ooze, the top ports opened and the crew began leaping from the hull onto the cliff.
Rawson counted them. They were all there. All sixty—there should be sixty-one. But one had been lost in the quicksand at the first landing.
The crew stood huddled in a bunch and watched the top of the hull disappear below the quicksand.