I hope these things will work all right."
"You may be quite sure that I shouldn't have put _you_ into one of them
if I hadn't tested them pretty thoroughly," he replied, swinging the
door open and throwing out a light folding iron ladder which was hinged
to the floor.
They were in the shade cast by the hull of the _Astronef_. For about ten
yards in front of her Zaidie saw a dense black shadow, and beyond it a
stretch of grey-white sand lit up by a glare of sunlight which would
have been intolerable if it had not been for the smoke-coloured slips of
glass which had been fitted behind the glass visors of the helmets.
Over it were thickly scattered boulders and pieces of rock bleached and
desiccated, and each throwing a black shadow, fantastically shaped and
yet clearly defined on the grey-white sand behind it. There was no soil,
and all the softer kind of rock and stone had crumbled away ages ago.
Every particle of moisture had long since evaporated; even chemical
combinations had been dissolved by the alternations of heat and cold
known only on earth to the chemist in his laboratory.
Only the hardest rocks, such as granites and basalts, remained.
Everything else had been reduced to the universal grey-white impalpable
powder into which Zaidie's shoes sank when she, holding her husband's
hand, went down the ladder and stood at the foot of it--first of the
earth-dwellers to set foot on another world.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93