The Captain chuckled. "Some cultures go through an agrarian stage to
reach a technological civilization, and some pass through technology to
reach the pastoral."
"I don't see it," said Johnny shortly, eyes ahead.
Paresi's hand touched the Captain's arm, and the Captain then said
nothing.
_Pwing-g-g!_
"Stand by for landing," said the Captain.
Ives and Hoskins went aft to the shock-panels in the after bulkhead.
Paresi and the Captain stepped into niches flanking the console. Johnny
touched a control that freed his chair in its hydraulic gimbals. Chair
and niches and shock-panels would not be needed as long as the
artificial gravity and inertialess field functioned; it was a ritual.
The ship skimmed treetops, heading phlegmatically for a rocky bluff. A
gush of flame from its underjets and it shouldered heavily upward, just
missing the jagged crest. A gout of fire forward, another, and it went
into a long flat glide, following the fall of a foothill to the plain
beyond. It held course and reduced speed, letting the ground billow up
to it rather than descending. There was a moment of almost-flight,
almost-sliding, and then a rush of dust and smoke which over-took and
passed them. When it cleared, they were part of the plain, part of the
planet.
"A good landing, John," Paresi said. Hoskins caught his eye and frowned.
Paresi grinned broadly, and the exchange between them was clear: _Why do
you needle the kid?_ and _Quiet, Engine-room. I know what I'm doing._
Hoskins shrugged, and, with Ives, crossed to the communications desk.
Ives ran his fat, skilled hands over the controls and peered at his
indicators. "It's more than a good landing," he grunted. "That
squeak-box we homed in on can't be more than a hundred meters from here.
First time I've ever seen a ship bullseye like that."
Johnny locked his gimbals, ran a steady, sensitive hand over the turn of
the console as if it were a woman's flank. "Why--how close do you
usually come?"
"Planetfall's close enough to satisfy Survey," said the Captain. "Once
in a while the box will materialize conveniently on a continent. But
this--this is too good to be true. We practically landed on it."
Hoskins nodded. "It's usually buried in some jungle, or at the bottom of
a sea. But this is really all right. What a lineup! Point nine-eight
earth gravity, Earth-type atmosphere--"
"Argon-rich," said, Ives, from the panel. "Very rich."
"That'll make no real difference," Hoskins went on. "Temperature, about
normal for an early summer back home ... looks as if there's a fiendish
plot afoot here to make things easy for us."