He was spellbound with utter awe at
the spectacle he beheld. This brilliant world a-gleam to its farthest
horizon with golden, glorious sunlight, softly spread and diffused!
This, _this!_ was the Dark Moon!

* * * * *

He turned to share with the others the delirium of ecstatic wonder too
overpowering to be borne alone--turned, to find his happiness shot
through with a pang of regret. He saw Chet and Diane. They had been
standing together at a wide forward lookout; and now she was holding
one hand of the pilot to her breast in an embrace of passionate joy.

Unconscious, that gesture of delight at this climax of their perilous
trip?--Harkness told himself that this was so. But he swung back to
the helm of the ship. He glanced at instruments that again were
registering; he saw the air-pressure indicator that told of oxygen
and an atmosphere where men might live. He gauged his distance
carefully, and prepared to land.

The moment of depression could not last, for there was too much here
to fill brain and eyes. What would they find? Was there life? His
question was answered by an awkward body that flapped from beneath
them on clumsy wings. He glimpsed a sinuous neck, a head that was all
mouth and flabby pouch, and the mouth opened ludicrously in what was
doubtless a cry of alarm.

Then land, that took form and detail; a mountain whose curled top was
like a frozen wave of stone. In a valley below it trees were growing.
They swayed in a wind, and their branches reached upward and flowed
and waved like seaweed on the ocean's floor. Green--vivid, glowing
green!--and reds and purples that might be flowers and fruit.

* * * * *

An open space in a little valley spread invitingly before him, and he
laid the ship down there in a jungle of lush grasses--set it down as
gently as if he were landing from a jaunt of a thousand miles instead
of two hundred times that distance straight away from Earth.

The others were looking at him with glowing, excited eyes. In the
cabin was silence. Harkness felt that he must speak, must say
something worthy of the moment--something to express in slight degree
the upwelling emotion that filled them all, three adventurers about to
set foot upon a virgin world....

The pause was long-drawn, until he ended it in a voice that had all
the solemn importance of a head-steward's announcement on a liner of
the high-level service. But the