rs. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground
and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.

* * * * *

Sustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little
with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in
each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that
appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,
and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off
the generator.

"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a
small cage in which was penned an active rat.

He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little
animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the
bare lava and halted a moment....

"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.

The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out
of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying
ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.

"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets--and that we'd
better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes
snapping behind his glasses.

He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long
and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which
was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of
its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in
gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most
powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to
carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.

"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then--let's go!"

* * * * *

But for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double
door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of
the moment.

The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new
continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first
to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing
heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal
creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced
when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this
occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic
continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to dis