Operation: Outer Space

Chapter Six

Jamison declaimed, wearing a throat–mike as Bell zestfully panned his camera and the ship swung down. It was an impressive broadcast. The rockets roared. With the coming of air about the ship, they no longer made a mere rumbling. They created a tumult which was like the growl of thunder if one were in the midst of the thunder–cloud. It was a numbing noise. It was almost a paralyzing noise. But Jamison talked with professional smoothness.

"This planet," he orated, while pictures from Bell's camera went direct to the transmitter below, "this planet is the first world other than Earth on which a human ship has landed. It is paradoxic that before men have walked on Mars' red iron–oxide plains and breathed its thin cold air, or fought for life in the formaldehyde gales of Venus, that they should look upon a world which welcomes them from illimitable remoteness. Here we descend, and all mankind can watch our descent upon a world whose vegetation is green; whose glaciers prove that there is air and water in plenty, whose very smoking volcanoes assure us of its close kinship to Earth!"

He lifted the mike away from his throat and framed words with his lips. "Am I still on?" Cochrane nodded. Cochrane wore headphones carrying what the communicator carried, as this broadcast went through an angled Dabney field relay system back to Lunar City and then to Earth. He spoke close to Jamison's ear.

"Go ahead! If your voice fades, it will be the best possible sign–off. Suspense. Good television!"

Jamison let the throat–mike back against his skin. The roaring of the rockets would affect it only as his throat vibrated from the sound. It would register, even so.

"I see," said Jamison above the rocket–thunder, "forests of giant trees like the sequoias of Mother Earth. I see rushing rivers, foaming along their rocky beds, taking their rise in glaciers. We are still too high to look for living creatures, but we descend swiftly. Now we are level with the highest of the mountains. Now we descend below their smoking tops. Under us there is a vast valley, miles wide, leagues long. Here a city could be built. Over it looms a gigantic mountain–spur, capped with green. One would expect a castle to be built there."

He raised his eyebrows at Cochrane. They were well in atmosphere, now, and it had been an obvious defect—condition—necessity of the Dabney field that both of its plates should be in a vacuum. One was certainly in air now. But Cochrane made that gesture which in television production–practice informs the actors that time to cutting is measured in tens of seconds, and he held up two fingers. Twenty seconds.

"We gaze, and you gaze with us," said Jamison, "upon a world that future generations will come to know as home—the site of the first human colony among the stars!"

Cochrane began to beat time. Ten, nine, eight—.

"We are about to land," Jamison declaimed. "We do not know what we shall find—What's that?" He paused dramatically. "A living creature?—A living creature sighted down below! We sign off now—from the stars!"

The ending had been perfectly timed. Allowing for a three–second interval for the broadcast to reach the moon, and just about two more for it to be relayed to Earth, his final word, "Stars!" had been uttered at the precise instant to allow a four–minute commercial by Intercity Credit, in the United States, by Citroen in Europe, by Fabricanos Unidos in South and Central America, and Near East Oil along the Mediterranean. At the end of that four minutes it would be time for station identification and a time–signal, and the divers eight–second flashes before other programs came on the air.

The rockets roared and thundered. The ship went down and down. Jamison said:

"I thought we'd be cut off when we hit air!"

"That's what Jones thought," Cochrane assured him. He bellowed above the outside tumult, "Bell! See anything alive down below?"

Bell shook his head. He stayed at the camera aimed out a blister–port, storing up film–tape for later use. There was the feel of gravitation, now. Actually, it was the fact that the ship slowed swiftly in its descent.

Cochrane went to a port. The ship continued its descent.

"Living creature? Where?"

Jamison shrugged. He had used it as a sign–off line. An extrapolation from the fact that there was vegetation below. He looked somehow distastefully out the port at a swiftly rising green ground below. He was a city man. He had literally never before seen what looked like habitable territory of such vast extent, with no houses on it. In a valley easily ten miles long and two wide, there was not a square inch of concrete or of glass. There was not a man made object in view. The sky was blue and there were clouds, but to Jamison the sight of vegetation implied rooftops. There ought to be parapets where roofs ended to let light down to windows and streets below. He had never before seen grass save on elevated recreation–areas, nor bushes not arranged as landscaping, and certainly not trees other than the domesticated growths which can grow on the tops of buildings. To Jamison this was desolation. On the moon, absence of structures was understandable. There was no air. But here there should be a city!

The ship swayed a little as the rockets swung their blasts to balance the descending mass. The intended Mars–ship slowed, and slowed, and hovered—and there was terrifying smoke and flame suddenly all about—and then there was a distinct crunching impact. The rockets continued to burn, their ferocity diminished. They slackened again. And yet again. They were reduced to a mere faint murmur.

There was a remarkable immobility of everything. It was the result of gravity. Earth–value gravity, or very near it. There was a distinct pressure of one's feet against the floor, and a feeling of heaviness to one's body which was very different from Lunar City, and more different still from free flight in emptiness.

Nothing but swirling masses of smoke could be seen out the ports. They had landed in a forest, of sorts, and the rocket–blasts had burned away everything underneath, down to solid soil. In a circle forty yards about the ship the ground was a mass of smoking, steaming ash. Beyond that flames licked hungrily, creating more dense vapor. Beyond that still there was only coiling smoke.

Cochrane's headphones yielded Babs' voice, almost wailing:

"Mr. Cochrane! We must have landed! I want to see!"

Cochrane pressed the hand–mike button.

"Are we still hooked up to Lunar City?" he demanded. "We can't be, but are we?"

"We are," said Babs' voice mutinously. "The broadcast went through all right. They want to talk to you. Everybody wants to talk to you!"

"Tell them to call back later," commanded Cochrane. "Then leave the beam working—however it works!—and come up if you like. Tell the moon operator you'll be away for ten minutes."

He continued to stare out the window. Al, the pilot, stayed in his cushioned seat before the bank of rocket–controls. The rockets were barely alight. The ship stayed as it had landed, upright on its triple fins. He said to Jones:

"It feels like we're solid. We won't topple!"

Jones nodded. The rocket–sound cut off. Nothing happened.

"I think we could have saved fuel on that landing," said Jones. Then he added, pleased, "Nice! The Dabney field's still on! It has to be started in a vacuum, but it looks like it can hold air away from itself once it's established. Nice!"

Babs rushed up the stairs. She gazed impassionedly out of a vision–port. Then she said disappointedly:

"It looks like—"

"It looks like hell," said Cochrane. "Just smoke and steam and stuff. We can hope, though, that we haven't started a forest fire, but have just burned off a landing–place."

They stared out. Presently they went to another port and gazed out of that. The smoke was annoying, and yet it could have been foreseen. A moon–rocket, landing at its space–port on Earth, heated the tarmac to red–hotness in the process of landing. Tender–vehicles had to wait for it to cool before they could approach. Here the ship had landed in woodland. Naturally its flames had seared the spot where it came down. And there was inflammable stuff about, which caught fire. So the ship was in the situation of a phoenix, necessarily nesting in a conflagration. Anywhere it landed the same thing would apply, unless it tried landing on a glacier. But then it would settle down into a lake of boiling water, amid steam, and could expect to be frozen in as soon as its landing–place cooled.

Now there was nothing to do. They had to wait. Once the whole ship quivered very slightly, as if the ground trembled faintly under it. But there was nothing at which to be alarmed.

They could see that this particular forest was composed mainly of two kinds of trees which burned differently. One had a central trunk, and it burned with resinous flames and much black and gray–black smoke. The other was a curious growth—a solid, massive trunk which did not touch ground at all, but was held up by aerial roots which supported it aloft through very many slender shafts widely spread. Possibly the heavier part was formed on the ground and lifted as its air–roots grew.

It was irritating, though, to be unable to see from the ship so long as the fire burned outside. The pall of smoke lasted for a long time. In three hours there were no longer any fiercely blazing areas, but the ashes still smouldered and smoke still rose. In three hours and a half, the local sun began to set. There were colorings in the sky, beyond all comparison glorious. Which was logical enough. When Krakatoa, back on Earth, blew itself to bits in the eighteen hundreds, it sent such volumes of dust into the air that sunsets all around the globe were notably improved for three years afterward. On this planet, smoking cones were everywhere visible. Volcanic dust, then, made nightfall magnificent past description. There was not only gold and crimson in the west. The zenith itself glowed carmine and yellow, and those in the space–ship gazed up at a sky such as none of them could have imagined possible.

The colors changed and changed, from yellow to gold all over the sky, and still the glory continued. Presently there was a deep, deep red, deep past imagining, and presently faint bluish stars pierced it, and they stared up at new strange constellations–some very bright indeed—and all about the ship there was a bed of white ash with glowing embers in it, and a thin sheet of white smoke still flowed away down the valley.

It was long after sunset when Cochrane got up from the communicator. Communication with Earth was broken at last. There was a balloon out in space somewhere with an atomic battery maintaining all its surface as a Dabney field plate. The ship maintained a field between itself and that plate. The balloon maintained another field between itself and another balloon a mere 178.3 light–years from the solar system. But the substance of this planet intervened between the nearer balloon and the ship. Jones made tests and observed that the field continued to exist, but was plugged by the matter of this newly–arrived–at world. Come tomorrow, when there was no solid–stone barrier to the passage of radiation, they could communicate with Earth again.

But Cochrane was weary and now discouraged. So long as talk with Earth was possible, he'd kept at it. There was a great deal of talking to be done. But a good deal of it was extremely unsatisfactory.

He found Bill Holden having supper with Babs, on the floor below the communicator. Very much of the recent talk had been over Cochrane's head. He felt humiliated by the indignation of scientists who would not tell him what he wanted to know without previous information he could not give.

When he went over to the dining–table, he felt that he creaked from weariness and dejection. Babs looked at him solicitously, and then jumped up to get him something to eat. Everybody else was again watching out the ship's ports at the new, strange world of which they could see next to nothing.

"Bill," said Cochrane fretfully, "I've just been given the dressing–down of my life! You're expecting to get out of the airlock in the morning and take a walk. But I've been talking to Earth. I've been given the devil for landing on a strange planet without bringing along a bacteriologist, an organic chemist, an ecologist, an epidemiologist, and a complete laboratory to test everything with, before daring to take a breath of outside air. I'm warned not to open a port!"

Holden said:

"You sound as if you'd been talking to a biologist with a reputation. You ought to know better than that!"

Cochrane protested:

"I wanted to talk to somebody who knew more than I did! What could I do but get a man with a reputation?"

Holden shook his head.

"We psychiatrists," he observed, "go around peeping under the corners of rugs at what people try to hide from themselves. We have a worm's–eye view of humanity. We know better than to throw a difficult problem at a man with an established name! They're neurotic about their reputations. Like Dabney, they get panicky at the idea of anybody catching them in a mistake. No big name in medicine or biology would dare tell you that of course it's all right for us to take a walk in the rather pretty landscape outside."

"Then who will?" demanded Cochrane.

"We'll make what tests we can," said Holden comfortingly, "and decide for ourselves. We can take a chance. We're only risking our lives!"

Babs brought Cochrane a plate. He put food in his mouth and chewed and swallowed.

"They say we can't afford to breathe the local air at all until we know its bacteriology; we can't touch anything until we test it as a possible allergen; we can't."

Holden grunted.

"What would those same authorities have told your friend Columbus? On a strange continent he'd be sure to find strange plants and strange animals. He'd find strange races of men and he ought to find strange diseases. They'd have warned him not to risk it. They wouldn't!"

Cochrane ate with a sort of angry vigor. Then he snapped:

"If you want to know, we've got to land! We're sunk if we don't go outside and move around! We'll spoil our story–line. This is the greatest adventure–serial anybody on Earth ever tuned in to follow! If we back down on exploration, our audience will be disgusted and resentful and they'll take it out on our sponsors!"

Babs said softly, to Holden:

"That's my boss!"

Cochrane glared at her. He didn't know how to take the comment. He said to Holden:

"Tomorrow we'll try to figure out some sort of test and try the air. I'll go out in a space–suit and crack the face–plate! I can close it again before anything lethal gets in. But there's no use stepping out into a bed of coals tonight. I'll have to wait till morning."

Holden smiled at him. Babs regarded him with intent, enigmatic eyes.

Neither of them said anything more. Cochrane finished his meal. Then he found himself without an occupation. Gravity on this planet was very nearly the same as on Earth. It felt like more, of course, because all of them had been subject only to moon–gravity for nearly three weeks. Jones and the pilot had been in one–sixth gravity for a much longer time. And the absence of gravity had caused their muscles to lose tone by just about the amount that the same time spent in a hospital bed would have done. They felt physically worn out.

It was a healthy tiredness, though, and their muscles would come back to normal as quickly as one recovers strength after illness—rather faster, in fact. But tonight there would be no night–life on the space–ship. Johnny Simms disappeared, after symptoms of fretfulness akin to those of an over–tired small boy. Jamison gave up, and Bell, and Al the pilot fell asleep while Jones was trying to discuss something technical with him. Jones himself yawned and yawned and when Al snored in his face he gave up. They retired to their bunks.

There was no point in standing guard over the ship. If the bed of hot ashes did not guard it, it was not likely that an individual merely sitting up and staring out its ports would do much good. There were extremely minor, practically unnoticeable vibrations of the ship from time to time. They would be volcanic temblors—to be expected. They were not alarming, certainly, and the forest outside was guarantee of no great violence to be anticipated. The trees stood firm and tall. There was no worry about the ship. It was perfectly practical, and even necessary simply to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

But Cochrane could not relax. He was annoyed by the soreness of his muscles. He was irritated by the picture given him of the expedition as a group of heedless ignoramuses who'd taken off without star–charts or bacteriological equipment—without even apparatus to test the air of planets they might land on!—and who now were sternly warned not to make any use of their achievement. Cochrane was not overwhelmed by the achievement itself, though less than eighteen hours since the ship and all its company had been aground on Luna, and now they were landed on a new world twice as far from Earth as the Pole Star.

It is probable that Cochrane was not awed because he had a television–producer's point of view. He regarded this entire affair as a production. He was absorbed in the details of putting it across. He looked at it from his own, quite narrow, professional viewpoint. It did not disturb him that he was surrounded by a wilderness. He considered the wilderness the set on which his production belonged, though he was as much a city man as anybody else. He went back to the control–room. With the ship standing on its tail that was the highest point, and as the embers burned out and the smoke lessened it was possible to look out into the night.

He stared at the dimly–seen trees beyond the burned area, and at the dark masses of mountains which blotted out the stars. He estimated them, without quite realizing it, in view of what they would look like on a television screen. When light objects in the control–room rattled slightly, he paid no attention. His rehearsal–studio had been rickety, back home.

Babs seemed to be sleepless, too. There was next to no light where Cochrane was—merely the monitor–lights which assured that the Dabney field still existed, though blocked for use by the substance of a planet. Babs arrived in the almost–dark room only minutes after Cochrane. He was moving restlessly from one port to another, staring out.

"I thought I'd tell you," Babs volunteered, "that Doctor Holden put some algae from the air–purifier tanks in the airlock, and then opened the outer door."

"Why?" asked Cochrane.

"Algae's Earth plant–life," explained Babs. "If the air is poisonous, it will be killed by morning. We can close the outer door of the lock, pump out the air that came from this planet, and then let air in from the ship so we can see what happens."

"Oh," said Cochrane.

"And then I couldn't sleep," said Babs guilelessly. "Do you mind if I stay here? Everybody else has gone to bed."

"Oh, no," said Cochrane. "Stay if you like."

He stared out at the dark. Presently he moved to another port. After a moment he pointed.

"There's a glow in the sky there," he said curtly.

She looked. There was a vast curving blackness which masked the stars. Beyond it there was a reddish glare, as if of some monstrous burning. But the color was not right for a fire. Not exactly.

"A city?" asked Babs breathlessly.

"A volcano," Cochrane told her. "I've staged shows that pretended to show intellectual creatures on other planets—funny how we've been dreaming of such things, back on Earth—but it isn't likely. Not since we've actually reached the stars."

"Why since then?"

"Because," said Cochrane, half ironically, "man was given dominion over all created things. I don't think we'll find rivals for that dominion. I can't imagine we'll find another race of creatures who could be—persons. Heaven knows we try to rob each other of dignity, but I don't think there's another race to humiliate us when we find them!"

After a moment he added:

"Bad enough that we're here because there are deodorants and cosmetics and dog–foods and such things that people want to advertise to each other! We wouldn't be here but for them, and for the fact that some people are neurotics and some don't like their bosses and some are crazy in other fashions."

"Some crazinesses aren't bad," argued Babs.

"I've made a living out of them," agreed Cochrane sourly. "But I don't like them. I have a feeling that I could arrange things better. I know I couldn't, but I'd like to try. In my own small way, I'm even trying."

Babs chuckled.

"That's because you are a man. Women aren't so foolish. We're realists. We like creation—even men—the way creation is."

"I don't," Cochrane said irritably. "We've accomplished something terrific, and I don't get a kick out of it! My head is full of business details that have to be attended to tomorrow. I ought to be uplifted. I ought to be gloating! I ought to be happy! But I'm worrying for fear that this infernal planet is going to disappoint our audience!"

Babs chuckled again. Then she went to the stair leading to the compartment below.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"After all, I'm going to leave you alone," said Babs cheerfully. "You're always very careful not to talk to me in any personal fashion. I think you're afraid I'll tell you something for your own good. If I stayed here, I might. Goodnight!"

She started down the stairs. Cochrane said vexedly:

"Hold on! Confound it, I didn't know I was so transparent! I'm sorry, Babs. Look! Tell me something for my own good!"

Babs hesitated, and then said very cheerfully:

"You only see things the way a man sees them. This show, this trip—this whole business doesn't thrill you because you don't see it the way a woman would."

"Such as how? What does a woman see that I don't?"

"A woman," said Babs, "sees this planet as a place that men and women will come to live on. To live on! You don't. You miss all the real implications of people actually living here. But they're the things a woman sees first of all."

Cochrane frowned.

"I'm not so conceited I can't listen to somebody else. If you've got an idea—"

"Not an idea," said Babs. "Just a reaction. And you can't explain a reaction to somebody who hasn't had it. Goodnight!"

She vanished down the stairs. Some time later, Cochrane heard the extremely minute sound of a door closing on one of the cabins three decks down in the space–ship.

He went back to his restless inspection of the night outside. He tried to make sense of what Babs had said. He failed altogether. In the end he settled in one of the over–elaborately cushioned chairs that had made this ship so attractive to deluded investors. He intended to think out what Babs might have meant. She was, after all, the most competent secretary he'd ever had, and he'd been wryly aware of how helpless he would be without her. Now he tried painstakingly to imagine what changes in one's view the inclusion of women among pioneers would involve. He worked out some seemingly valid points. But it was not a congenial mental occupation.

He fell asleep without realizing it, and was waked by the sound of voices all about him. It was morning again, and Johnny Simms was shouting boyishly at something he saw outside.

"Get at it, boy!" he cried enthusiastically. "Grab him! That's the way—"

Cochrane opened his eyes. Johnny Simms gazed out and down from a blister–port, waving his arms. His wife Alicia looked out of the same port without seeming to share his excited approval. Bell had dragged a camera across the control–room and was in the act of focussing it through a particular window.

"What's the matter?" demanded Cochrane.

He struggled out of his chair. And Johnny Simms' pleasure evaporated abruptly. He swore nastily, viciously, at something outside the ship. His wife touched his arm and spoke to him in a low tone. He turned furiously upon her, mouthing foulnesses.

Cochrane was formidably beside him, and Johnny Simms' expression of fury smoothed out instantly. He looked pleasant and amiable.

"The fight stopped," he explained offhandedly. "It was a good fight. But one of the creatures wouldn't stay and take his licking."

Alicia said steadily:

"There were some animals there. They looked rather like bears, only they had enormous ears."

Cochrane looked at Johnny Simms with hot eyes. It was absurd to be so chivalrous, perhaps, but he was enraged. After an instant he turned away and went to the port. The burned–over area was now only ashes. At its edge, charcoal showed. And now he could see trees and brushwood on beyond. The trees did not seem strange, because no trees would have seemed familiar. The brush did not impress him as exotic, because his experience with actual plants was restricted to the artificial plants on television sets and the artificially arranged plants on rooftops. He hardly let his eyes dwell on the vegetation at all. He searched for movement. He saw the moving furry rumps of half a dozen unknown creatures as they dived into concealment as if they had been frightened. He looked down and could see the hull of the ship and two of the three take–off fins on which it rested.

The airlock door was opening out. It swung wide. It swung back against the hull.

"Holden's making some sort of test of the air," Cochrane said shortly. "The animals were scared when the outside door swung open. I'll see what he finds out."

He hurried down. He found Babs standing beside the inner door of the airlock. She looked somehow pale. There were two saucers of greenish soup–like stuff on the floor at her feet. That would be, of course, the algae from the air–purifying–system tanks.

"The algae were alive," said Babs. "Dr. Holden went in the lock to try the air himself. He said he'd be very careful."

For some obscure reason Cochrane felt ashamed. There was a long, a desperately long wait. Then sounds of machinery. The outer door closing. Small whistlings—compressed air.

The inner door opened. Bill Holden came out of the lock, his expression zestfully surprised.

"Hello, Jed! I tried the air. It's all right! At a guess, maybe a little high in oxygen. But it feels wonderfully good to breathe! And I can report that the trees are wood and the green is chlorophyll, and this is an Earth–type planet. That little smoky smell about is completely familiar—and I'm taking that as an analysis. I'm going to take a walk."

Cochrane found himself watching Babs' face. She looked enormously relieved, but even Cochrane—who was looking for something of the sort without realizing it—could not read anything but relief in her expression. She did not, for example, look admiring.

"I'll borrow one of Johnny Simms' guns," said Holden, "and take a look around. It's either perfectly safe or we're all dead anyhow. Frankly, I think it's safe. It feels right outside, Jed! It honestly feels right!"

"I'll come with you," said Cochrane, "Jones and the pilot are necessary if the ship's to get back to Earth. But we're expendable."

He went back to the control–room. Johnny Simms zestfully undertook to outfit them with arms. He made no proposal to accompany them. In twenty minutes or so, Cochrane and Holden went into the airlock and the door closed. A light came on automatically, precisely like the light in an electric refrigerator. Cochrane found his lips twitching a little as the analogy came to him. Seconds later the outer door opened, and they gazed down among the branches of tall trees. Cochrane winced. There was no railing and the height bothered him. But Holden swung out the sling. He and Cochrane descended, dangling, down fifty feet of unscarred, shining, metal hull.

The ground was still hot underfoot. Holden cast off the sling and moved toward cooler territory with an undignified haste. Cochrane followed him.

The smells were absolutely commonplace. Scorched wood. Smokiness. There were noises. Occasional cracklings from burned tree–trunks not wholly consumed. High–pitched, shrill musical notes. And in and among the smells there was an astonishing freshness in the feel of the air. Cochrane was especially apt to notice it because he had lived in a city back on Earth, and had spent four days in the moon–rocket, and then had breathed the Lunar City air for eighteen days more and had just come from the space–ship whose air was distinctly of the canned variety.

He did not notice the noise of the sling again in motion behind him. He was all eyes and ears and acute awareness of the completely strange environment. He was the more conscious of a general strangeness because he was so completely an urban product. Yet he and Holden were vastly less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous generations would have been. They did not notice the oddity of croaking sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree–tops. When they had threaded their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot and merely toasted foliage all around, Cochrane heard a sweet, high–pitched trilling which came from a half–inch hole in the ground. But he was not astonished by the place from which the trilling came. He was astonished at the sound itself.

There was a cry behind them.

"Mr. Cochrane! Doctor Holden!"

They swung about. And there was Babs on the ground, just disentangling herself from the sling. She had followed them out, after waiting until they had left the airlock and could not protest.

Cochrane swore to himself. But when Babs joined them breathlessly, after a hopping run over the hot ground, he said only:

"Fancy meeting you here!"

"I—I couldn't resist it," said Babs in breathless apology. "And you do have guns. It's safe enough—oh, look!"

She stared at a bush which was covered with pale purple flowers. Small creatures hovered in the air about it. She approached it and exclaimed again at the sweetness of its scent. Cochrane and Holden joined her in admiration.

In a sense they were foolishly unwary. This was completely strange territory. It could have contained anything. Earlier explorers would have approached every bush with caution and moved over every hilltop with suspicion, anticipating deadly creatures, unparalleled monsters, and exotic and peculiar circumstances designed to entrap the unprepared. Earlier explorers, of course, would probably have had advice from famous men to prepare them for all possible danger.

But this was a valley between snow–clad mountains. The river that ran down its length was fed by glaciers. This was a temperate climate. The trees were either coniferous or something similar, and the vegetation grew well but not with the frenzy of a tropic region. There were fruits here and there. Later, to be sure, they would prove to be mostly astringent and unpalatable. They were broad–leafed, low–growing plants which would eventually turn out to be possessed of soft–fleshed roots which were almost unanimously useless for human purposes. There were even some plants with thorns and spines upon them. But they encountered no danger.

By and large, wild animals everywhere are ferocious only when desperate. No natural setting can permanently be so deadly that human being will be attacked immediately they appear. An area in which peril is continuous is one in which there is so much killing that there is no food–supply left to maintain its predators. On the whole, there is simply a limit to how dangerous any place can be. Dangerous beasts have to be relatively rare, or they will not have enough to eat, when they will thin out until they are relatively rare and do have enough to eat.

So the three explorers moved safely, though their boldness was that of ignorance, below gigantic trees nearly as tall as the space–ship standing on end. They saw a small furry biped, some twelve inches tall, which waddled insanely in the exact line of their progress and with no apparent hope of outdistancing them. They saw a gauzy creature with incredibly spindly legs. It flew from one tree–trunk to another, clinging to rough bark on each in turn. Once they came upon a small animal which looked at them with enormous, panic–stricken blue eyes and then fled with a sinuous gait on legs so short that they seemed mere flippers. It dived into a hole and vanished.

But they came out to clear space. They could look for miles and miles. There was a savannah of rolling soil which gradually sloped down to a swift–running river. The grass—if it was grass—was quite green, but it had multitudes of tiny rose–colored flowers down the central rib of each leaf. Nearby it seemed the color of Earth–grass, but it faded imperceptibly into an incredible old–rose tint in the distance. The mountain–scarps on either side of the valley were sheer and tall. There was a great stony spur reaching out above the lowland, and there was forest at its top and bare brown stone dropping two thousand feet sheer. And up the valley, where it narrowed, a waterfall leaped out from the cliff and dropped hundreds of feet in an arc of purest white, until it was lost to view behind tree–tops.

They looked. They stared. Cochrane was a television producer, and Holden was a psychiatrist, and Babs was a highly efficient secretary. They did not make scientific observations. The ecological system of the valley escaped their notice. They weren't qualified to observe that the flying things around seemed mostly to be furry instead of feathered, and that insects seemed few and huge and fragile,—and they did not notice that most of the plants appeared to be deciduous, so indicating that this planet had pronounced seasons. But Holden said:

"Up in Greenland there's a hospital on a cliff like that. People with delusions of grandeur sometimes get cured just by looking at something that's so much greater and more splendid than they are. I'd like to see a hospital up yonder!"

Babs said, shining–eyed:

"A city could be built in this valley. Not a tall city, with gray streets and gardens on the roofs. This could be a nice little city like people used to have. There would be little houses, all separate, and there'd be grass all around and people could pluck flowers if they wanted to, to take inside…. There could be families here, and homes—not living–quarters!"

Cochrane said nothing. He was envious of the others. They saw, and they dreamed according to their natures. Cochrane somehow felt forlorn. Presently he said depressedly:

"We'll go back to the ship. You can work out your woman's viewpoint stuff with Bell, Babs. He'll write it, or you can give it to Alicia to put over when we go on the air."

Babs made no reply. The absence of comment was almost pointed. Cochrane realized that she wouldn't do it, though he couldn't see why.

They did go back to the ship. Cochrane sent Babs and Holden up the sling, first, while he waited down below. It was a singular sensation to stand there. He was the only human being afoot on a planet the size of Earth or larger, at the foot of a cliff of metal which was the space–ship's hull. He had a weapon in his hand, and it should defend him from anything. But he felt very lonely.

The sling came down for him. He felt sick at heart as it lifted him. He had an overwhelming conviction of incompetence, though he could not detail the reasons. The rope hauled him up, swaying, to the dizzy height of the air–lock door. He could not feel elated. He was partly responsible for humankind's greatest achievement to date. But he had not quite the viewpoint that would let him enjoy its contemplation.

The ground quivered very faintly as he rose. It was not an earthquake. It was merely a temblor, such as anyone would expect to feel occasionally with six smoking volcanic cones in view. The green stuff all around was proof that it could be disregarded.