The needle quivered.
Edri let out a hoarse cry. "Easy! Easy!" Tears began to run down his cheeks. He sobbed. The needle was still again.
"Circle!" Trehearne shouted to Quorn. "Circle till we get it centered."
He ran his tongue over his lips and tasted salt, and wondered how it got there.
Quorn swung the skiff around in a tightening spiral until Edri said, "Now! Let her down."
He scrambled forward, thrusting his face against the port, trying to see. Quorn switched on a landing-light. The blue-white blaze lit up a circular area below, the light intensely bright, the shadows intensely black. Its beam went sharply down.
They followed it. It was as though the skiff were poised on that pillar of light, sinking downward. They were above a planetary surface racked and tortured by final diastrophism. Towering miles high, loomed a mighty cliff of riven rock. In front of it a chasm yawned, and beyond the chasm a drear and tumbled landscape stretched dim under the great sword of the Galaxy.
They started down along the face of the titanic cliff. Looking at the chasm at its base Trehearne began to get uneasy.
"There's no ship here," he said. "The counter must have picked up some last radiation from deep down in that chasm."
Quorn agreed with him. But Edri said, "No, keep going." Trehearne could feel him tremble.