Halfrich got to the 'scope fast. Kellard, looking through the scanner,
saw the geyser of flame that was beginning to pour up from the rocks.
It grew slowly, but steadily, in height.
"What is it?" Halfrich asked him.
"Can't you see for yourself?" said Kellard. "There's a blowhole out
there and it throws off burning gases from the interior. It did it
twice while I was waiting in the wreck."
Halfrich said, "It's in the same location where radar recorded you
before, with those other blips. There's something about this--We'll go
have a look."
"If you must," said Kellard. "You'll find it's just what I've said."
They got into the heat-armor. It was a clumsy outfit, for it had to
have room for an efficient anti-heater, and the long tube of the
heat-discharge was a nuisance. Kellard had spent days in one of these
suits, waiting for the relief ship after the crack-up, and he did not
like the feel of it at all.
Halfrich tested the radio and then said, "All right, Shay, lock us out
and stand by. Morgenson, you keep watching."
They stepped upon Sunside.
There beat down upon them such a storm of radiation, such cataracts of
heat and light, that instinctively they bowed their heads as before a
deluge. It took an effort of will to step forward through that tempest,
but Halfrich made it. They walked, slowly and heavily, and at first
they saw only the blackened rocks beneath their feet, and the little
puddles and rivulets of molten lead, and their own massive armored feet
plodding.
Then, as they went forward, they straightened against the impact.
Through the face-plate of his armor, dimmed by the many-layered
filters, Kellard saw the column of flame ahead. It was a hundred feet
high now, and growing higher, and though there was no air-borne sound
on this almost airless world, the sound of it came through the rocks
and the soles of their feet, a throbbing and roaring that quivered
through all their bodies.
* * * * *
They reached the tumbled rocks, and stopped. And now the fire-fountain
was so lofty that they had to lean back their heads to look at its
topmost crest. Some unthinkable diastole and systole of the fiery
planet was at work, and this periodic geyser of flame was its result.
The rocks shook and roared, and the fires raged higher, and Kellard
thought again, what devil is in the blood of our race that drives us
to places like this where we should not be?
"I told you," he said to Halfrich, "Just a blowhole, that's all."
"The blips on the record moved," said Halfrich. "There was more than
this."
"Look around you!" cried Kellard desperately. "Do you see anything
moving, anything that _could_ move? You were wrong, Halfrich. Do you
have to keep us here until we all die, because you can't admit you're
wrong?"
Halfrich hesitated. "I wasn't wrong. You're still lying. But we'll go
back to the ship and wait."
They turned their backs on the fire-fountain, and Kellard felt the
sweat pouring on his forehead. It hadn't happened this time, and they
couldn't wait forever, they would have to go away and--
Morgenson's voice chattered in their ears. "Blips showing, coming--"
And then he suddenly yelled, "I see them! They--"
Halfrich swung around with ponderous swiftness. There was nothing
between them and the fire-fountain, nothing around the spouting flames.
"Above you, coming down!" shouted Morgenson. "My God, what--?"
Kellard slowly raised his head. Because he knew what to look for, he
saw them while Halfrich was still gazing around searching.
They came flashing down out of the sky. There were four of them this
time--no, five. They were like five individual swirls of shining light,
so bright that the sun-bleached heavens seemed to darken around them.