Lars had heard of the feeling. The old-timers called it “land-shock” and it struck Lars like a tidal wave as he felt frozen mud crunch under his boots. Until this moment he had been protected, warm and secure in the bosom of a ship that was, in effect, an extension of home. Hull plates were thin, and the shell of the ship was frail enough, but its strengh lay in what it represented. Now that strength was sheared away, and he felt for the first time the desolation of no protection, the almost physical shock of standing alone, a frail flesh and blood creature, on the open surface of a barren, alien land. There was a sense of loss, of overpowering dread, and Lars found a dozen panicky thoughts flooding his mind as he glanced over his shoulder at the ship behind them: Suppose it’s gone when we come hack. What if we were stranded here, without ship, without food? What if—they— attacked while we were gone? What if—
He thrust the thoughts angrily from his mind, even as a shiver went through him. The groups of men were huddled around Commander Fox now as he gave them their last briefing. Lars moved into the huddle, heard the Commander’s voice, metallic through the speaker-plate of his suit.
“Now this is a routine reconnaissance, nothing more. We aren’t aiming to go far from the ship, nor to do too much on this trip, just a standard look around. Got that? We’ve got two major objectives: to confirm our preliminary findings of surface conditions, soil, atmosphere, any indigenous plant or animal life; and to see if it’s practical to try to take our half-track crawlers up that mountainside to the wrecked ship. Mr. Lorry, you’ll take your men and try to find a way across the river on your side, then check for an approach from the right. I’ll take my men and do the same on the left. We’ll make hourly checks with each other, and with the ship. Got that?”
Lorry nodded. “What about encampment?”
“We’ll have a short day, so it will be best to find a good encampment place, and return back to the ship tomorrow. You can break in any newcomers to outpost camping techniques, and get them trained for an assault on the wreck later. Kennedy, keep an eye on the terrain—I’ll want your opinion on the best approach to that thing up there—whether you can drop men from the scooter and pick them up again, or whether you can bring the scooter in to land somewhere higher than this. Okay? Let’s go!”
The Commander’s group began assembling. Salter and Leeds were huddled to one side with Bob Tenebreck of Lorry’s crew, talking rapidly and quietly, but the Commander was concerned with a final check of equipment and did not notice the hasty conference. Lars could not find Peter, at first; then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and they checked each other’s packs. But Peter was watching the conference closely, and when it broke up he moved in beside Leeds as Lambert came up to join Lars.
They started across the frozen delta land, in pairs, with Commander Fox in the lead, carrying the light intercom equipment as they moved.
“Cold!” Lars said between his teeth as Lambert joined him.
“You feel it?”
“Just inside.”
“I know. When I took my first step off a ship onto a new planet, I thought I was dead for sure.” Lambert grinned. “You feel as if you’re leaving your last hope of protection behind you.”
“But this place—”
“You’ll get over it. You’ll be calling this ‘home’ in no time.”
Lars grunted and bent against the stiff gale coming down the valley. The clouds were breaking to the sun-side now, flooding the frozen tundra with an unspeakably gloomy orange-gray light. “That I’ve got to see,” he said. “Right now, the sooner we’re back snug in the Ganymede the better I’ll like it.”
They were making their way across a hard, frozen stubble. Occasionally they broke through the icy crust, sinking ankle-deep into clinging brown mud. Ahead they could see the line of scrub trees clinging to the river’s edge, and beyond the green-black line of the jungle’s edge.
“I wonder why there’s no vegetation here?” Lars puzzled.
“This probably floods every spring,” Lambert said. “This is a poor excuse for summertime, but that’s what it is. This will probably melt during the day and turn into a real quagmire. And there can’t be much topsoil up there in those mountains to catch the runoff of snow, so it will fill the river during relatively warm summer days and cover these flats with mud.” He blinked as a flight of small black birds went by them at rocket-like speed. “Looked like ducks, for a minute.”
“They were,” Lars said. “About the size of robins, though. And I bet they’d be tough to eat.”
As they approached the river they found a surprising variety of animal life scuttling away at their approach. Most of the creatures were gray or black, with nature’s universal color protection, blending perfectly into the tarn. The sun rose higher, until the men cast shadows, but presently the sunlight flickered as deeper shadows crossed it.
Fox signaled a halt, and all eight men blinked up at the sky. Two mammoth hawk-like creatures were gliding across the cloud-studded sky, circling, returning. Hardly a feather fluttered in their wings, which seemed to form a black cape about their bodies. Suddenly the wings collapsed, and the creatures hurtled downward in perfect timing. A startled animal scream burst out near the landing party, and they heard the birds’ wings crash open with a sound like muffled thunder as they rose again into the air. One of them gripped in its talons a tiny furry creature like a short-eared rabbit and tried to make off with its prey, but the others moved in to battle. In an instant the sky was full of feathers of the great hawks and they screamed and raked each other, the rabbit falling to the ground forgotten.
They moved on toward the river, loading their sample bags with bits of the scrub vegetation and samples of soil and rock. Tiny insects scurried out of their way. “How can they live in this climate?” Commander Fox asked, dropping back to confer with Lambert.
“Probably genetic adaptability,” Lambert replied. “We saw the same thing in the microscopic flora. We can assume that this planet was not always so cold and that the change came gradually. Possibly it is having an ice age, just as we know happened on Earth. I want to see those trees, though. Ill bet they’re tough little plants!”
“Shouldn’t be long now. The river’s right ahead.”
They didn’t hurry. They paused for hourly checks with Lorry’s crew, matching their progress toward the other side of the delta. As they moved, the mountains ahead loomed bigger and more formidable. But nowhere was there any sign of life other than the simple forms they saw around them.
At last they reached the river, a wild, gray turbulent stream three hundred yards wide, throwing up a roar of sound that all but drowned out their voices. They moved up the banks, looking for a more favorable crossing place, and Fox signaled to stop for some lunch. It was as Lars sank down to munch his share of the self-heating ration that he made the first discovery.
Later they debated loudly what it was doing there, how it had gotten there, what its presence signified, but at the moment it was the source of unreasonable excitement, for beyond doubt it was a link, an artifact of home, of Earth, of Earthmen.
Lars thought it was a stone, at first, when he sat opposite it and blinked at it vacantly while he ate. His thoughts were far afield, and he must have stared at if for full five minutes before his mind gripped what his eyes were seeing: a gray speckled stone with the dim letters SS Planetfall spread across it.