"Sidi yadi, my friend."
The two men parted.
Fifteen minutes later a rustling whisper was audible throughout the Ekova, above the steady purr of the forward-pointing decelerating rockets. It became a deep-toned soughing which rapidly increased in volume to a loud roar, and then to a screeching hiss. The ship swayed and rocked a little. It was tearing its way into the terrestrial atmosphere.
In the conning tower forward, the pilot and his assistant were working calmly and cooly over the bewildering array of controlling mechanisms. Getting those thousands of tons of metal safely lowered into a space ship's cradle on the landing stage, was a difficult task, but the experience and efficiency of the two men was quite competent to cope with it.
Far below was a vast sea of winking lights—Chicago, its colossal skyscrapers looming up severe and white and beautiful in the glow.
The pilot's nimble fingers turned a small horizontal wheel at his side. The liner dipped and dropped slowly earthward toward an area of white light. A mass of cloud poured over the huge hull for an instant and then passed by. The outer shell of the great silvery whale which had been chilled to a degree from absolute zero, by the cold of space had been warmed but slightly by the rapid passage through the atmosphere and now gleamed with jewel-like hoar frost.
Down, down it floated until it was only three hundred feet above the landing stage. A red signal light gleamed suddenly on a panel within the control room, and the wizard of that eerie chamber shifted a tiny lever. The space ship halted and hung motionless supported by its repulsion plates. On the ground in the glare of floodlights white-clad men hurried about. Four mighty arms of metal groped upward from a mass of heavy framework. They clutched the craft with a grating noise, and then, with the slow deliberation of a sleepy giant, they drew it gently down into its cradle.
Within the Ekova all was abustle. Its doors, built solidly like the breeches of big cannons, swung open, permitting the cool night air to enter the ship, which for seven days had been a world sufficient unto itself. Gangplanks were let down, and the passengers, jesting gaily with one another began their leisurely descent to the ground. Customs officials worked feverishly. A webby derrick arm pointing out from an opening in the side of the liner, was unloading mail and costly material and equipment sent to Earth from the Red Planet.
The routine processes of debarkation over, Shelby and Janice Darell entered the covered causeway which led to the great terminal building of the Space Travel Company.