B whispers it was there a moment ago, it is pretty cloudy down
there--Yes Lizzie there it is _look_.
And I see it. Over to the left, very faint and far below, a pin-prick
of light.
Light in the polar wastes of a sparsely inhabited planet, and since we
are still five miles up it is a very powerful light too.
No doubt about it, as we descend farther; about fifty miles from our
objective there are men, quite a lot of them.
I think it is just then that I understand, _really_ understand, the
hazard of what we are doing. This is not an exercise. This is in dead
earnest, and if we have missed an essential factor or calculated
something wrong the result will be not a bad mark or a failed exam, or
even our personal deaths, but incalculable harm and misery to millions
of people we never even heard of.
Dead earnest. How in Space did we ever have cheek enough for this?
The lights might be the essential factor we have missed, but there is
nothing we can do about them now.
Mr. Yardo suddenly chuckles and points to the screen.
"There you are, girlies! He's down!"
There, grayly dim, is the map the colonel showed us; and right on the
faint line of the cliff-edge is a small brilliant dot.
The map is expanding rapidly, great lengths of coastline shooting out
of sight at the edge of the screen. Mr. Yardo has the cross-hairs
centered on the dot which is _Gilgamesh_. The dot is changing shape;
it is turning into a short ellipse, a longer one. The gyros are
leaning her out over the sea.
I look at my chronometer; 12.50 hours exactly. B looks, too, and grips
my hand.
Thirty seconds later the Andite has not blown; first fuse safety
turned off. Surely she is leaning far enough out by now?
We are hovering at five hundred feet. I can actually see the white
edge of the sea beating at the cliff. Mr. Yardo keeps making small
corrections; there is a wind out there trying to blow us away. It is
cloudy here: I can see neither moons nor stars.
Mr. Yardo checks the radio. Nothing yet.