He inhaled deeply. The air was moist and sweet after the tainted stuff
they'd been breathing for three years. He'd forgotten how sweet. It was
almost intoxicating.
The ladder was lowered. Matt went over the side, riding it down. When
it struck, he leaped off and scooped up a double-handful of the muddy
earth.
There was a shout from above. Then everyone, staff and crew, came
swarming down the ladder.
For a while they went a little mad, dancing and scooping up the blessed
mud.
The director at last called a halt. "Hold on," he yelled above their
laughing.
Matt was conscious suddenly of the cold rain. He was drenched to his
hide, and he shivered. He glanced around, peering into the night.
As well as he could distinguish, they had come down in a valley. He
could hear a stream purling on his left, and saw the dark slope of
pines reared up behind the ship.
"It's a little after one in the morning, Earth time," the director
called out. "There's nothing that we can do tonight...."
"I'd like to climb to the top of the hill and look around," Matt
interrupted. "We might spot a light."
"And I!"
"Me, too." The last was Lynn's voice, Matt recognized. A dozen others
echoed the wish.
"Very well," said the director. "I--I think that I, too, shall go
along."
They struggled up the hill in the black and the rain. It was higher
than Matt had guessed, but at length they came to the crest.
Slowly Matt turned around and around.
Blackness!
Everywhere he looked there was only impenetrable blackness. Not even a
pin prick of light broke the monotony.
"We--we must be in an unsettled area," Lynn ventured in a small voice
at his elbow.
He looked around at the blur that was the girl. "It's the country," he
suggested. "People go to bed early in the country."
"Maybe," said the girl. "I ... let's go back to the ship, Matt. I'm
cold."
Without a word, he took her arm and piloted her back down the slope.
They climbed the ladder.
"What's wrong here, Matt?" asked the girl, her eyes wide and frightened.
"Wrong?" echoed Matt. They had reached the corridor to the cabins.
"Nothing, so far as we know. The fact that there weren't any lights
doesn't mean anything. We may be in the mountains."
He paused. "You should skin out of those clothes. You're soaked to the
skin."
She shivered again. Her thin coveralls were plastered against her,
revealing every swelling curve and indentation. Her hair hung limp and
wringing wet. A little bead of water trickled down her tip-tilted nose.
"You look like a drowned rat," he informed her with a grin.
A sudden shrill scream burst on their ears, followed by terrified
shouting.