To wait, helplessly, eleven light-years away might create more tenseness than being right on the scene. Yet no voice came through the ship's speaker, either from Earth or from the observer's ship.
Perhaps McGinnis, forgetting his eighty years, wished now he were at Eden instead of Cal. Perhaps, mindful of his years, he didn't. He made no comment.
Tom dropped the ship lower and lower, each time pausing for an air sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from the ground.
"Let's set her down, Tom," Cal said quietly.
Tom shrugged, as if that were the only thing left to do.
"You're the E," he said. His glance at Louie showed he was placing the responsibility not so much to avoid consequences for himself, nor so much to assure they were willing to follow an E's orders without question, as to remind Louie that there was, after all, an E with them. And if he were willing to face this unknown, they could hardly do less themselves.
But Louie's eyes were fixed in unblinking stare upon the ground below them. He was frozen and unheeding.
The actual landing was so flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out of the port to confirm that they were no longer hovering.
"Might as well open up," he said. "Nothing has happened to us, so far."
Norton pushed a button. The exit hatch slipped open and the ramp unfolded and slid down to touch ground. Cal, flanked by Tom and Frank, looked through the opening into the woods beyond.