Swiftly we jetted down toward that bulging, inflated tent, fitted with its zippered airlock compartment. It stood alone in frigid desolation. "S.S. Intruder" was lettered on its side.
We alighted on the plastic face window of the armored figure, and clung to scratches in the material.
From this position we looked at the face of the man, huge, handsome to our former view, but made ugly by magnification. The skin-pores were craters. Individual scales of the epidermis, with the living cells beneath, were all visible, on forehead and nose, and around the colossal eyes, in which the separate flecks of pigmentation could be seen. It was an impressive, belittling vista.
The colossal jaw worked slightly: the narrowed gaze looked grim.
"It's Scharber!" Jan said. "He stayed here to keep watch, hoping for a sign from us, I'll bet! He knew part of what we were doing. But now he doesn't even notice us, any more than you notice motes on a windowpane. And how can we talk to him? He could never hear our voices directly. How can we get anything across?"
The riddle faced us tautly, as if we were trapped forever in a lesser dimension, even beyond communication with our own kind.
"The jet rods again!" Doc shouted. "He'll see the spark of blue fire!"
Doc braced himself in a scratch ridge in the plastic and squeezed the trigger of his rod. At a little distance, the glassy surface boiled up in dazzling flame. When the thread of intense atomic heat was broken off, a smoldering pit was left in the outer surface of Scharber's face window. A mere pinprick.
But plainly Scharber had observed, and added it up. His great eyes widened; the plateaux that were his cheeks, paled. In the canyon-like ridges of his brow, came the sweat of fear. Drops of it were bulging lakes, rushing down past the lopped-off redwood trunks of the blond bristle along his jowls.