Mercer and I clung tightly to the platform. We did not speak, and I think both of us were frightened. Certainly we were awed by the experience. After a time—I have no idea how long—we passed through the storm and came again into the open air with the same gray sky above us.
We were several thousand feet up now, flying over what seemed to be a tumbling mass of small volcanic craters. In front of us rose a sheer cliff wall, extending to the right and left to the horizon. We passed over its rim, and I saw that it curved slightly inward, forming the circumference of a huge circle.
The inner floor was hardly more than a thousand feet down, and seemed fairly level. We continued on, arriving finally over the mouth of a little circular pit. This formed an inner valley, half a mile across and with sheer side walls some five hundred feet high. As we swung down into it I noticed above the horizon behind us a number of tiny black dots in the sky—other girls flying out from the city to our meeting.
I have never beheld so wild, so completely desolate a scene. The ground here was that same shining mass of virgin metal, tumbled about and broken up in hopeless confusion.
Great rugged bowlders lay strewn about; tiny caverns yawned; fissures opened up their unknown depths; sharp‑pointed crags reared their heads like spires left standing amid the ruins of some huge cathedral. There was, indeed, hardly a level spot of ground in sight.
I wondered with vague alarm where we should land, for nowhere could I see sufficient space, even for our small platform. We were following closely the line of cliff wall when suddenly we swooped sharply downward and to the right with incredible speed. My heart leaped when, for an instant, I thought something had gone wrong. Then the forward end of the platform tilted abruptly upward; there was a sudden, momentary fluttering of wings, a scrambling as the girls' feet touched the ground, and we settled back and came to rest with hardly more than a slight jar.
Miela stood up, rubbing her arms, which must have ached from her efforts.
"We are here, Alan—safely, as we planned."
We had landed on a little rocky niche that seemed to be in front of the opening of a small cave mouth in the precipitous cliffside. I stood up unsteadily, for I was cramped and stiff, and the solid earth seemed swaying beneath me. I was standing on what was hardly more that a narrow shelf, not over fifteen feet wide and some thirty feet above the base of the cliff.
Mercer was beside me, looking about him with obvious awe.