There came a jar as it
touched the scorched earth at the foot of the Queen's fins.
Dane pressed the release and watched the lines whip up and the hatch
above snap shut. Then he opened the controls. He used too much energy and
shot into the air, tearing a wide gap through what was luckily a thin
screen of the matted foliage, before he gained complete mastery.
Then he was able to level out and bore westward, the rising sun at his
back, the sea of deadly green beneath him, and somewhere far ahead the
faint promise of clean, radiation free land holding the help they needed.
Mile after mile of the green jungle swept under the flitter, and the
flash of the counter's light continued to record a land unfit for
mankind. Even with the equipment used on distant worlds to protect what
spacemen had come to recognize was a reasonably tough human frame, no
ground force could hope to explore that wilderness in person. And flying
above it, as well insulated as he was, Dane knew that he could be
dangerously exposed. If the contaminated territory extended more than a
thousand miles, his danger was no longer problematical--it was an
established fact.
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