It didn't remain that way for long. As if Teejay's words had been a signal, a voice boomed at them from the wall-microphone. "We have landed. All humans will please file out into the main corridor in an orderly fashion and make their way to the airlock."
Schuyler Barling sat up groggily.
Teejay said, "I could swear I know that voice from somewhere."
"And I," Kevin told them. "It's familiar, though I can't place it."
Steve felt his heart pounding. The voice was Charlie's.
They stood on a flat, grassy plain which stretched halfway to the horizon and then began to undulate into low hills. And far off, shrouded by purple mists, a range of mountains loomed distantly.
Purple mist; a purplish cast to the sky; a fiercely bright blue sun. "What world is this?" said Kevin.
The crew of the Frank Buck—a hundred men—stood in a long, thin file outside the ship. They'd balked at first, but silently, the three anthrovacs had ferreted them out with their neutron guns, never uttering a sound, merely motioning with the weapons. Of the other animals Steve saw nothing, but within the corridors of the Frank Buck he'd encountered a sand crawler and a desert cat, both dead.
The seconds fled, became minutes. When half an hour had passed, the crew became restless and some of them ambled off on the grassy plain until one of the anthrovacs herded them back. The Frank Buck's Exec, a short, wiry man, strode within the ship and came out a few moments later, scratching his head. "I can't understand it," he said. "None of the instruments work. I thought we could just pile back into the ship and blast off, but apparently someone has other ideas."