"You take command here?"
"Yes. I am no more anxious for a crash than you are, Hahn."
He sighed with relief. "That is true, of course. I am no expert at
atmospheric entry."
"Have no fear. Sit down, Moa."
I waved to the lookout in the forward watch tower, and got his routine
gesture. I rang the corridor bells, and the normal signals came
promptly back.
I turned to Hahn. "Get along, won't you? Tell Miko that things are all
right here."
Hahn's small dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting
trousers and jacket with his robe now discarded, went swiftly down the
spider incline and across the deck.
"Moa, where is Snap? By the infernal--if he has been injured--"
Up on the radio room bridge, the brigand guard still sat. Then I saw
that Snap was out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret
window, and Snap's cheery gesture answered me. His voice carried down
through the silver moonlight: "Land us safely, Gregg. These weird
amateur navigators!"
Within the hour I had us dropping into the asteroid's atmosphere. The
ship heated steadily. The pressure went up. It kept me busy with the
instruments and the calculations. But my signals were always promptly
answered from below. The brigand crew did its part efficiently.
At a hundred and fifty thousand feet I shifted the gravity plates to
the landing combinations, and started the electronic engines.
"All safe, Gregg?" Moa sat at my elbow; her eyes, with what seem a
glow of admiration in them, followed my busy routine activities.
"Yes. The crew works well."
The electronic streams flowed out like a rocket tail behind us. The
_Planetara_ caught their impetus. In the rarefied air, our bow lifted
slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred
thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's
surface, cruising to seek a landing space.
A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the
night down there. Occasional verdurous islands showed, with the lines
of white surf marking them. Beyond the sea, a curving coastline was
visible. Rocky headlines, behind which mountain foothills rose in
serrated, verdurous ranks. The sunlight edged the distant mountains;
and presently this rapidly turning little world brought the sunlight
forward.
It was day beneath us. We slid gently downward. Thirty thousand feet
now, above a sparkling blue ocean. The coastline was just ahead; green
with a lush, tropical vegetation. Giant trees, huge-leaved. Long,
dangling vines; air plants, with giant pods and vivid orchidlike
blossoms.
I sat at the turret window, staring through my glasses. A fair, little
world, yet obviously uninhabited. I could fancy that all this was
newly sprung vegetation. This asteroid had whirled in from the cold of
the interplanetary space, far outside our solar system. A few years
ago--as time might be measured astronomically, it was no more than
yesterday--this fair landscape was congealed white and bleak with a
sweep of glacial ice. But the seeds of life miraculously were here.
The miracle of life! Under the warming, germinating sunlight, the
verdure had sprung.
"Can you find landing space, Gregg?" Moa's question brought back my
wandering fancies. I saw an upland glade, a level spread of ferns with
the forest banked around it. A cliff height nearby, frowning down at
the sea.
"Yes. I can land us there." I showed her through the glasses. I rang
the sirens, and we spiraled, descending further. The mountain tops
were now close beneath us. Clouds were overhead, white masses with
blue sky behind them. A day of brilliant sunlight. But soon, with our
forward cruising, it was night. The sunlight dropped beneath the
sharply convex horizon; the sea and the land went purple.
A night of brilliant stars; the Earth was a blazing blue-red point of
light. The heavens visibly were revolving; in an hour or so it would
be daylight again.
On the forward deck now Coniston had appeared, commanding half a dozen
of the crew. They were carrying up caskets of food and the equipment
which was to be given the marooned passengers. And making ready the
disembarking incline, loosening the seals of the side dome windows.
Sternward on the deck, by the lounge oval, I could see Miko standing.
And occasionally the roar of his voice at the passengers, sounded.
My vagrant thoughts flung back into Earth's history. Like this,
ancient travelers of the surface of the sea were herded by pirates to
walk the plank, or be put ashore, marooned upon some fair desert
island of the tropic Spanish main.