Part 25 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 gla.s.ses. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 gla.s.ses. I rang the sirens, and we spiraled, descending further. The mountain tops were now close beneath us. Clouds were overhead, white ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 ash.o.r.e, marooned upon some fair desert island of the tropic Spanish main.

Hahn came mounting our turret incline. ”All is well, Gregg Haljan?”

”Get to your work,” Moa told him sharply.

He retreated, joining the bustle and confusion which now was beginning on the deck. It struck me--could I turn that confusion to account?