Torrence, with his usual efficient practicality, had been busy getting our landing equipment in order. He paused beside me in the green-house, where I sat at the rocket-stream controls which now were in operation for this atmospheric flight.
"Where you figure on landing?" he asked. "Somewhere about here? You want to locate that allurite?"
"Yes," I agreed.
It is not altogether safe, handling even so small a space-flight ship as ours, in atmosphere at low altitudes. Especially over unknown terrain. It seemed my best course now to make the landing here, secure my rock-samples and make my routine observations. I did not need Torrence to tell me that we were not equipped for extensive exploration of an unknown world. A trip on foot of perhaps a day or two, using the spaceship as a base, would suffice for my records.
"There's a better chance of finding sizable deposits of allurium here than anywhere else?" Torrence suggested. "Don't you think so?"
With that, too, I agreed. He prepared us for a night and a few meals of camping—a huge pack for himself, which with a grin he declared himself amply able to carry; a smaller one for Jan; and my instruments and electro-mining drills for me.
We dropped down within an hour or two, landing with a circular swing into a dim, cauldron-like depression of the desert where the polished ground was nearly level and free of boulders.
That was a thrill to me—my first step into the new world—even though I have experienced it several times before. Laden with our packs, we opened the lower-exit pressure porte. The night air, under heavier pressure than we were maintaining inside, oozed in with a little hiss—moist, queer-smelling air. It seemed at first heavy, oppressive. The acrid smell of chemicals was in it.
The night-temperature was hot—sultry as a summer tropic night on Earth. With the interior gravity shut off as we opened the porte, at once I felt a sense of lightness. But it was not extreme. Despite Vulcan's small size, its great density gives it a gravity comparable to Earth's.