g for something of the sort
without realizing it--could not read anything but relief in her
expression. She did not, for example, look admiring.

"I'll borrow one of Johnny Simms' guns," said Holden, "and take a look
around. It's either perfectly safe or we're all dead anyhow. Frankly, I
think it's safe. It feels right outside, Jed! It honestly feels right!"

"I'll come with you," said Cochrane, "Jones and the pilot are necessary
if the ship's to get back to Earth. But we're expendable."

He went back to the control-room. Johnny Simms zestfully undertook to
outfit them with arms. He made no proposal to accompany them. In twenty
minutes or so, Cochrane and Holden went into the airlock and the door
closed. A light came on automatically, precisely like the light in an
electric refrigerator. Cochrane found his lips twitching a little as the
analogy came to him. Seconds later the outer door opened, and they gazed
down among the branches of tall trees. Cochrane winced. There was no
railing and the height bothered him. But Holden swung out the sling. He
and Cochrane descended, dangling, down fifty feet of unscarred, shining,
metal hull.

The ground was still hot underfoot. Holden cast off the sling and moved
toward cooler territory with an undignified haste. Cochrane followed
him.

The smells were absolutely commonplace. Scorched wood. Smokiness. There
were noises. Occasional cracklings from burned tree-trunks not wholly
consumed. High-pitched, shrill musical notes. And in and among the
smells there was an astonishing freshness in the feel of the air.
Cochrane was especially apt to notice it because he had lived in a city
back on Earth, and had spent four days in the moon-rocket, and then had
breathed the Lunar City air for eighteen days more and had just come
from the space-ship whose air was distinctly of the canned variety.

He did not notice the noise of the sling again in motion behind him. He
was all eyes and ears and acute awareness of the completely strange
environment. He was the more conscious of a general strangeness because
he was so completely an urban product. Yet he and Holden were vastly
less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous
generations would have been. They did not notice the oddity of croaking
sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree-tops. When they had threaded
their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot
and merely toasted foliage all around, Coc