All three of them cried out in terror as they fell. Finally Ted felt his body striking a cushioned surface. Then he was rolling down an incline of the same soft material. Down, down, head over heels he went—deeper and deeper into the core of the red planet, it seemed.
At last his body stopped turning. Something crashed into him from behind. Then he heard heavy breathing and gasping and he knew that it was either Randy or Jill who had collided with him.
“Jill? Randy?” he asked in a shuddery voice, still dazed by their rough experience.
“Yes,” Randy’s voice came weakly.
“Jill!” Ted cried. “Where are you?”
“Here I am,” she answered, from a few feet away. “What happened to us?”
“I don’t know,” her brother answered dully. He felt around for broken bones, but he appeared to be uninjured.
“Are you two all right?” he asked Jill and Randy.
They said they thought so. By now Ted could see their forms very faintly. There was light coming from somewhere. Their next task was to try to find a way out of this dismal place.
“I knew we should have gone back!” Jill complained bitterly. “Now we probably never will!”