"—the hell you got down there?" came Captain Savage's rasp. "Is that you up on the rock, Mr. Pritchard? Mr. Pritchard—"
"Captain!" yelled Pritchard. "Step on it! Come down on that monster. I'm all right. Come ahead!"
Then he snatched up a pair of solar goggles and worked his way to a viewport, in time to see the Apollo, a magnificent column of metal in the sky, descend on a pillar of incandescence—at the bottom of which lay something that bubbled and cooked, rising in a last great arch of simmering agony.
The snaggle-toothed horizon of Thisbe II was rising across the dull indigo disk of setting Piramus. Pritchard and Savage sat in their gimbal chairs in the Forward Lounge. The old man's wispy white hairs stirred in the evening breeze sucked in by the blowers.
"And every time I wonder if my hunting days aren't over," sighed Pritchard. Experimentally, he worked on the flexicast on his right arm.
"Huh," grunted the captain. "Not you. One week on Terra and you'll be telling yourself the next time it just can't be as bad. Or that this wasn't as bad as it seemed. Anything, you'll tell yourself. Anything to start—"
Cornelia appeared in the doorway. "Good evening, gentlemen," she said coolly. She was wearing cordron slacks and a soft neosilk blouse, that seemed to enjoy clinging to her contours.
"Good evening," croaked Captain Savage. He stood up, and stretched restlessly.
"Oh, don't go," said Cornelia.
"Well, if we're blasting off in the morning, I've got things to do. These days it's the old men who do all the work." He chuckled as he eased past her through the door, and gave her shoulder a little pat. "Good hunting."