"ROGAN?”
The tel- visor expert had spun his seat around and was facing another section of the control panel, his fingers flying across the buttons there. Needles spun on dials, indicators moved, and Rogan’s lips shaped words silently. When he had done Kimber flicked the control of the visa-screen which had gone dead at their landing.
Slowly pictures of the immediate surroundings of the ship unrolled before their fascinated eyes.
“Late afternoon,” Rogan commented, “by the length of the shadows.”
The ship had planeted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand-backed at a distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley down the center of which curved a stream.
’That water’s red!” Dard’s surprise jolted the words out of him.
The red river was hemmed in by blue-green, low-growing vegetation which cloaked the ground within the valley itself and ran in tongues along the water into the semi-arid stretch of sand. Their viewing device was across the river, picking up more cliffs and sand. Then they were fronted by ocean shore and vivid aquamarine waves tipped with white lacy foam. Into this emptied the river, staining the sea red for some distance. Sea, air, cliffs, river-but no living creature!
“Wait!” Kimber’s order sent Rogan’s finger down on a button and the picture on the screen became fixed. “Thought I saw something-flying in the air. But guess I was wrong.”
The scene changed until they were looking at the same spot where it had begun. Kimber stretched.
“This part of the country appears unoccupied. And, Tas, we didn’t sight any signs of civilization when we came in either. Maybe our luck’s held and we have an empty world.”