During the past hours the points of light had altered. The ball of flame Kimber designated as Sol II had slipped away over the edge of their narrow slice of vision. But the world they had chosen filled most of the expanse now, growing larger by seconds.
Kordov sat down in one of the other chairs to watch with Dard. The sphere on the screen now had a bluish-green tinge, with patches of other color.
“Polar regions—snow.” Kordov commented.
Cully replied with a single, “Yeh!”
“And seas—-“
To which Cully added the first long speech he had yet made.
“Got a lot of water. Should be picking up all land masses soon.”
“Unless it’s all water,” mused Kordov. “Then,” he grinned at Dard over his shoulder, “we shall be forced to leave it to the fish and try again.”
“One thing missing,” Culley adjusted the screen control for the second time. “No moon—“
No moon! Dard watched that enlarging sphere and for the first time since his awakening the dream-mood of passive acceptance of events cracked. To live under a sky where no silver globe ever hung. The moon gone! All the old songs men had sung, the old legends they had told and retold, the bit of history they cherished, that the moon was their first step into space, all gone. No moon—ever again!
“Then what will future poets find to rhyme with “June” in all their effusions?” rumbled Kordov. “And our nights to come-they will be dark ones. But one can not have everything—even another stepping stone to space. That was how our moon served us—a way station, a beckoning sign post which lured us on and out. If there is or ever was intelligent life down there—they lacked that.”
“No sign of space travel?” Cully wanted to know with a spark of interest.
“None. But of course, we can in no way be sure. Just because nothing has registered on our screens we can not say that it does not exist. If we were but a fraction off a well- traveled space lane we would not know it! And now, Dard, we have Rogan to rouse. I promised Sim that he would be on hand to share duty.”
Again they made that trip below, lifted out the proper box and brought back to life the man who slumbered in it.
“That is the last one,” stated Kordov when they had established Rogan in the control cabin. “No more until after we land. Hah!”
He had turned to look at the screen and the exclamation was jolted out of him by what he saw there. Land masses, mottled green-blue-red against which seas of a brighter hue washed.
“So we do not join fish. Instead you, Dard, must go and shake Sim back to life. Now is the time for him to be on duty!”
Shortly afterward Dard crouched on one of the acceleration mats beside the unconscious Rogan while the others occupied the chairs before the controls. The atmosphere within the cabin was tense and yet Kimber alone was at ease.
“Rogan come to yet?” he asked without turning his head.
Dard gently shook the shoulder of the man on the next mat. He stirred, muttered. Then his eyes opened and he scowled up at the roof of the cabin. A second later he sat up.
“We made it!” he shouted.
“That we did!” Kordov answered cheerfully. “And now—“
“Now there’s a job waiting for you, fella,” broke in Kimber. “Come up and tell us what you think of this.”
Kordov spilled out of the third chair and helped Rogan into it. Holding tightly to the arms of the seat, as if be feared any moment to be tossed out of it, Rogan gave his full attention to the screen. He drew a deep breath of pure wonder.
“It’s—it’s beautiful!”
Dard agreed with that. The mingling of color was working on him—just as sunsets back on Terra had been able to do. There were no words he knew to describe what he now saw. But be didn’t have a chance to watch long.
“Better strap down,” came the suggestion from the pilot. “We’re going in “
Kordov plumped down on one of the acceleration mats, pulling the harness which flanked it up over his body, and Dard did the same. He was flat on his back against the spongy stuff of the pad with his head at an angle from which he could not see the screen. They bored into atmosphere and he must have blacked out, for he never afterward remembered the last part of the furious descent.
The ship shuddered, pushing up—or was it down-upon him. He had a misty idea that this must be full gravity returning. Then there was a shock which tore at the webs holding his body and he gasped, fighting for breath. But his hands were already at the buckles which fastened him down as he heard a voice say:
“End of the line! All out!”
And another replied—in Cully’s dry tone: “Neat, Sim, nice and neat.”
2. NEW WORLD
“ROGAN?”
The tel-visor expert had spun his seat around and was facing another section of the control panel, his fingers flying across the buttons there. Needles spun on dials, indicators moved, and Rogan’s lips shaped words silently. When he had done Kimber flicked the control of the visa-screen which had gone dead at their landing.
Slowly pictures of the immediate surroundings of the ship unrolled before their fascinated eyes.
“Late afternoon,” Rogan commented, “by the length of the shadows.”
The ship had planeted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand—backed at a distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley down the center of which curved a stream.
‘That water’s red!” Dard’s surprise jolted the words out of him.
The red river was hemmed in by blue-green, low-growing vegetation which cloaked the ground within the valley itself and ran in tongues along the water into the semi-arid stretch of sand. Their viewing device was across the river, picking up more cliffs and sand. Then they were fronted by ocean shore and vivid aquamarine waves tipped with white lacy foam. Into this emptied the river, staining the sea red for some distance. Sea, air, cliffs, river—but no living creature!
“Wait!” Kimber’s order sent Rogan’s finger down on a button and the picture on the screen became fixed. “Thought I saw something—flying in the air. But guess I was wrong.”
The scene changed until they were looking at the same spot where it had begun. Kimber stretched.
“This part of the country appears unoccupied. And, Tas, we didn’t sight any signs of civilization when we came in either. Maybe our luck’s held and we have an empty world.”
“Hmm. But is it one we can venture into?” The First Scientist squeezed over to Cully’s side of the cabin. “Atmosphere, temperature—within a fraction of Terra’s. Yes, we can live and breathe here.”
Kimber freed himself from the pilot’s straps. “Suppose we have a look-see in person then.”
Dard was the last to leave the cabin. He was still a little drunk with that riot of color on the visa-screen. After the remembered drabness of his home section of Terra this was overpowering. He was halfway down the ladder when he heard that clang which announced the opening of tile hatch and the emergence of the ramp that would carry them safely over ground super-heated by their jets.
When he came out the others were strung along the ramp, breathing the warm air, air that was pungent with a fresh tang. The breeze pulled at Dard’s hair, whipping a lock across his forehead, singing in his ears. Clean air—with none of the chemical taint which clung in the ship. Around the fins of their ship the sand had been fused into a curdled milky glass which they avoided by leaping from the end of the ramp to the dunes.
Kimber and Kordov plowed straight ahead to the wave-smoothed shore. Cully merely dropped in the soft grit of the beach, lying full length, his hands pressed tight to the earth, staring bemusedly up at the sky, while Rogan was pivoting slowly, as if to verify the scene tile visa-screen had shown them.
Dard made his way to the sand. The redness of the river occupied him. Red water—why? The sea was normal enough except where it was colored by the river. He wanted to know what painted the stream and he started off determinedly to its bank.
The sand was softer, more powdery than any he had known on Terra. It shifted into his boot packs, arose in puffs and covered all but the faintest outline where he had stepped. He stooped and sifted the stuff through his fingers, knowing a strange tingle as the earth of this new world drifted away from his palm—blue sand—red river-red, yellow and white striped cliffs—color everywhere about him! Overhead that arch of cloud studded blue—or was it blue at all? Didn’t it have just the faintest shading of green? Turquoise rather than true blue! Now that he was becoming accustomed to the color he could distinguish more subtle shades among the glows of brighter tones—shades he could not name-like that pale violet which streaked the sand.