. The water that should be in the
seas was frozen in the glaciers. Salt would not have been leached out of
the soil and gathered in the seas. It would be a serious problem. But
Cochrane was very tired indeed.

"I'll take the first two hours," said Babs briskly. "Then I'll wake
you."

He showed her how to use the weapon. He meant to let himself drift
quietly off to sleep, acting as if he had a little trouble going off.
But he didn't. He lay down, and the next thing he knew Babs was shaking
him violently. In the first dazed instant when he opened his eyes he
thought they were surrounded by forest fire. But it wasn't that. It was
dawn, and Babs had let him sleep the whole night through, and the sky
was golden-yellow from one horizon to the other. More, he heard the
now-familiar cries of creatures in the forest. But also he heard a
roaring sound, very thin and far away, which could only be one thing.

"Jed! Jed! Get up! Quick! The ship's coming back! The ship! We've got to
move!"

She dragged him to his feet. He was suddenly wide-awake. He ran with
her. He flung back his head and stared up as he ran. There was a
pin-point of flame and vapor almost directly overhead. It grew swiftly
in size. It plunged downward.

They reached the surrounding forest and plunged into it. Babs stumbled,
and Cochrane caught her, and they ran onward hand in hand to get clear
away from the down-blast of the rockets. The rocket-roaring grew louder
and louder.

The castaways gazed. It was the ship. From below, fierce flames poured
down, blue-white and raging. The silver hull slanted a little. It
shifted its line of descent. It came down with a peculiar deftness of
handling that Cochrane had not realized before. Its rockets splashed,
but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that had
been burned off at first. The rocket-flames, indeed, did not approach
the proportion to be seen on rockets on film-tape, or as Cochrane had
seen below the moon-rocket descending on Earth.

The ship settled within yards of its original landing-place. Its rockets
dwindled, but remained burning. They dwindled again. The noise was
outrageous, but still not the intolerable tumult of a moon-rocket
landing on Earth.

The rockets cut off.

The airlock door opened. Cochrane and Babs waved cheerfully from the
edge of the clearing. Holden appeared in the door and shouted down:

"Sorry to be so long coming back."

He waved and vanished. They had, of