Chapter IV

Within another day, we were close over it. Of necessity our velocity was much less now. We had tilted so that the asteroid was under us, with our base gravity plates in negation. Zura for twenty-four earth-hours had been repulsing us, retarding us, as we dropped upon it. Dr. Livingston had made careful calculations. The total mass of Zura, small as the asteroid was in size, he had figured to be nearly that of the earth. We confirmed it now, by the repulsing effect it had upon us.

Gradually we slowed, poised now midway in the northern hemisphere, Zura had a rotation on its axis of almost exactly four hours. That we had been able to check now--there had been six rotations in the span of an earth-day, as measured by our chronometer. A thousand miles up? It seemed now that we were no more than that. The Benson curve-rays, here in the turret, showed us on our tilted mirrors the full image of the little world directly under us. Its convexity long since had been apparent. It spread now like a huge cloud-enveloped ball, covering almost all the lower firmament.

"The clouds are lessening," Dr. Livingston said, as again he and I were alone in the turret. "We'll be able to descend easily through this atmosphere."

"Yes," I agreed.

There had been faint, though unmistakable, evidences of Xalite in many places. We had decided that our best course was to descend before the storms came back. Most of the moisture-masses seemed clustered over the southern hemisphere now. Here in the north, for six Zurian days it had been fairly clear. Swift alternation of day and night--days of gray, hazy light, with the sunlight often striking through. And nights of glittering stars. We had seen all the surface of the northern hemisphere now. Everywhere it was the same--bleak, metallic-looking gray rocks, wildly tumbled; huge, fantastic ice and snow formations; strewn pools of water, choked with melting ice.

Alan and I had mentioned that weird vision we had had of a living girl, so strangely fashioned in human mold. Was she real--or had our fancy tricked us? Dr. Livingston had blankly stared. From the big, handsome Peter Duroh had come a laugh and a ribald expression of hope that we were right. James Carruthers had merely stared incredulously, with his thin lips smiling and a look in his alert eyes that somehow seemed predatory.

But whether we had seen something animal or human, assuredly it had been alive. This atmosphere then, doubtless would be breatheable to us; and the temperature down there, by daylight at least, must be around 40F.

Dr. Livingston was checking his instruments. Another hour had passed. "Only five hundred miles of altitude now," he said. "I think we may use a little less repulsion for a time, and then the final retardation must begin."

Awesome descent. It took us another eighteen earth-hours while the weird convex surface of little Zura came up at us. I was often in the turret alone. Queerly an ominous sense of disaster was upon me. I could not tell why. Fear that we might not land safely? Surely it was not that. Rather was it as though, here in the little _Planeteer_ which had been our world, something was impending. Somehow I had grown to dislike Pete Duroh and Jim Carruthers. Just little things. That ribald laugh. A way they had seemingly of watching me, whispering together while I was at the spectroscope, checking what evidence I could find of the presence of Xalite on the asteroid's surface.

And young Grant, boyish multiple murderer, whom now I had come somehow to like--what was it that he had wanted to tell me? I had tried several times to see him alone to ask him; but obviously he was avoiding me now. Whatever it was, he had repented the impulse.

We were all five in the turret during the descent through the Zurian atmosphere. Only fifty thousand feet up now. It was night, with glittering stars above us, and below, that wild, tumbled, fantastic landscape spreading now off to the horizon, bleak and grim in the starlight....

* * * * *

Twenty thousand feet. Sudden daylight had come and then night again. We were moving with Zura now in her swift axial rotation, dropping almost vertically down, slowly now with a constant retardation. I did not mention it, but I realized that we were poised very nearly over where Alan and I had seen--or thought we had seen--that strange vision of a girl. She had not reappeared. Were there others like her here? A race of people so much like earth humans that one of them could be a beautiful young girl, so like a girl of earth that I had resented the ribald attitude of Carruthers and Duroh?

My thoughts seemed totally impossible, according to scientific logic. Yet Alan and I surely had seen her....

"This damn heat," Duroh said. He sat slumped on the control room floor, his lanky body in trousers and shirt. His black wavy hair was plastered on his forehead with sweat. He mopped it with his big handkerchief.

"You'll get it cold enough pretty soon," Carruthers laughed. "Take your time, Pete."

Carruthers was alertly watching Dr. Livingston as he shifted the gravity plates for a still greater retardation. "Going to slow us some more, Doc?"

"Yes. Yes, I don't want to take any chances."

Five thousand feet.... Then two thousand. Off to the right the great cauldron depression was like a mile-wide lake--black water choked with floating ice on which the starlight glistened prismatic. A great ramp of the gray metallic rock went up like a glacier to the left. Beside it, the foothills of distant mountains went up in great terraced tiers. Everywhere there were ice-filled gullies, with water pouring down out of many of them. Gullies, ravines and crevices; pits yawning with inky blackness....

And then I noticed that, weirdly, there seemed light inherent to these Zurian rock-masses. Some of the cave-mouths were not quite black--a little light appeared in them, glowing with a prismatic sheen.

A thousand feet. I was at the gravity control-board now, executing Dr. Livingston's swift murmured orders. Without our modern rocket-streams, the little _Planeteer_, I must admit, was unwieldy. We were dropping slowly, with a side drift. In a corner Alan sat staring at us, with his hands gripped between his knees, his fingers working nervously. Duroh and Carruthers were standing tense beside me.

It was a touchy few minutes. We were some two hundred feet above a broken ice-strewn plateau, with a side drift that was carrying us toward a small cliff. I could see where Dr. Livingston intended to land now--a little shallow bowl-depression near the cliff, where the bottom seemed flat, with soft snow. The _Planeteer_ was hovering upright, with a very slow, vertical axis rotation, so that as I used the cliff's repulsion to check our drift, I was shifting the current constantly in our side gravity plates.

Queer how one may think of two things at once! I was seated at the control table, with my fingers roving its gravity-plate shifting keys. Dr. Livingston was tensely peering through the side bull's-eyes, gauging our position, our downward and sidewise drift; calling out to me his orders. Certainly my mind had never been more alertly on anything than it now was on those gravity keys. But nevertheless, suddenly I was aware of an electric feeling here in the control room. Carruthers and Duroh exchanging glances. And over in the corner young Alan, with his hands between his knees, his fingers writhing, his dark gaze brooding on me.

"Base negation! Full--quickly now!" Dr. Livingston called.

We were almost over the snowy depression--hardly the height of the _Planeteer_ above it. I flung on the base repulsion; held it only some ten seconds. Then gave attraction for an instant.

That may have been the first landing of any space-ship in the history of the Universe. I do not know, of course; but I will say we eased the little _Planeteer_ down as light as a falling snowdrop. There was hardly a bump as we landed, with the base flat in the melting snow, and the globe of the _Planeteer_ almost exactly upright.

"Good enough, John. We did it!" Dr. Livingston was triumphant. He swung toward me, his face flushed with pleasure. Jim Carruthers was close beside him. "Good work, wasn't it, Jim?"

"Yes," Carruthers said, with his thin smile. "You did nicely, Doctor." He was partly behind Dr. Livingston; I saw his arm raised behind Livingston's back. I had no more warning than that. The knife Carruthers was clutching stabbed deeply. I saw the smile fade off poor Dr. Livingston's face, with a dazed look of wonderment spreading there as he tossed up his arms and sprawled forward. He dropped in a crumpled heap almost at my feet, with the alumite knife-handle sticking from his back where a ghastly crimson stain already was spreading on his white shirt.

"Why--why, good Lord--" I gasped. I was on my feet; mind blurred, numbed with horror. My fists clenched as I whirled at Carruthers. "Why--why, you damned--"

"Easy there!" It was Peter Duroh's growling voice behind me. I swung to face him. His big lanky figure leaned nonchalantly against one of the side bull's-eye windows. Both his hands were at his hips--his hands gripping an old-fashioned bullet-projector and a Banning heat-gun, with muzzles leveled at my chest!