Eden Read Online Free Page B

light nylon knapsack from his cabin, and was stuffing K rations into the pockets when the Doctor reappeared, holding a short oxidized cylinder that ended in a valve.
    "And what is that?" the Engineer asked with interest.
    "A weapon."
    "What does it shoot?"
    "Sleeping gas."
    The Engineer burst out laughing.
    "What makes you think that your gas can put to sleep anything living on this planet?"
    "If you were attacked, you could always anesthetize yourself," said the Chemist. Everyone laughed, including the Doctor.
    "This should knock out any oxygen-breathing creature," he said. "And if there's an attack—watch!"
    He pulled a trigger at the base of the cylinder. A needle-thin stream of vapor shot into the darkness of the corridor.
    "Well, for lack of anything better…" said the Engineer doubtfully.
    "Shall we go?" asked the Doctor, slipping the cylinder into one of the pockets of his suit.
    "Let's go."
    The sun was high overhead—small and distant, yet hotter than the Earth's. But what struck them most was that the sun was not completely circular. They observed it through the cracks of their fingers and through the semitransparent red paper used for wrapping the individual antiradiation packs.
    "It's flattened because of the velocity of its revolution around its axis, is that right?" the Chemist asked the Captain.
    "Yes. The flattening was more noticeable during the flight. You don't remember?"
    "But, you see, I wasn't paying attention then…"
    They turned away from the sun and looked at their ship. The white cylindrical hull jutted obliquely from the low hill in which it was embedded, resembling a gigantic cannon. Its surface—milky white in shadow and silvery in sunlight—appeared undamaged. The Engineer approached the spot where the ship had entered the ground, stepped over the rim of upthrown soil that surrounded the hull like a collar, and ran his hand along the plating.
    "Not bad material, this ceramite," he said, not turning around. "If I could just have a look at the funnels…" He looked wistfully up at the jets suspended above the plain.
    "We'll do that later," said the Physicist. "But now let's reconnoiter."
    The Captain had reached the top of the elevation. The others hurried after him. Smooth and buff-colored, the sun-drenched plain stretched unvaryingly in all directions. The slender silhouettes that they had observed the day before rose in the distance, but in the bright sunlight it was clear that these were not trees. The sky, overhead as blue as Earth's, took on a distinctly greenish tinge at the horizon. To the north, faint cirrus clouds moved slowly. The Captain was checking directions on the small compass strapped to his wrist. The Doctor bent over and began poking at the soil with his foot.
    "Why isn't anything growing here?" he asked, amazed.
    They were all struck by that. The plain was bare as far as the eye could see.
    "It seems to be a region subject to increasingly steppe-like conditions," said the Chemist uncertainly. "Farther on, there to the west—see those patches?—it gets yellower. That must be desert. And the wind blows the sand here. Because this knoll is clay."
    "That we certainly know," said the Doctor.
    "We need a plan of some sort for our expedition," the Captain began. "The supplies we're taking with us will last two days."
    "Not even that—we don't have much water," the Cyberneticist said.
    "We'll ration the water until we locate some here. Where there's oxygen, there's water. I suggest we proceed as follows: from the base we go in a straight line, and only so far that we can return safely and without haste."
    "A maximum of fifteen miles in any direction," the Physicist said.
    "Agreed. The only question is the kind of reconnaissance."
    "Wait," said the Engineer, who had been standing apart as though mulling something over. "Don't you think this is a little crazy? We've crashed on an unknown planet, we've just managed to crawl out, and instead of doing the most important thing,