Everyone watched with bated breath as Tom switched on his 3-D telejector and tuned several dials to amplify the picture signals being relayed back to earth by the Video Vikings.
As if by magic, a strange scene sprang into view. Tom was projecting it out over the water under the illumination of floodlights.
162 3-D TELEJECTOR
“Roarin’ rockets!” Bud blurted. The other spectators gasped and exclaimed in awe.
The scene showed a weirdly monotonous landscape of tiny, clustering green hillocks. Tom switched from camera to camera but all four robots relayed the same sort of terrain.
“No buildings-no sign of living creatures!” Bud muttered. “Isn’t there anything up there but those green bumps?”
Working the robot controls, Tom swiveled one Video Viking’s head so its camera eyes could observe the other robots gliding gently down toward the surface of the Orb.
“Are you going to land them?” Palfrey asked.
Tom nodded. Manipulating the controls, he brought the robots in for a smooth landing braked by VTOL compressed gas jets. The Orb’s low gravity made this maneuver gentle and easy.
To their amazement, the earth observers noticed that the Orb’s surface was spongy rather than hard. It seemed to yield slightly at every step taken by the robots as they stalked along the winding, mazelike troughs or valleys between the hillocks.
Presently the entire green landscape began to heave sluggishly, like a billowing ocean. The robots teetered on their tubular legs and might have gone down had it not been for their gyro-balancing mechanisms. The hillocks themselves appeared to seethe and undulate.
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