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Then the four, as prearranged, unlimbered the work rocket they had picked. There were several sizes of small exploration craft. They had at first thought of the tractor an enclosed, airtight truck on tractor wheels which could crawl up to the station while the men inside it were protected by air conditioning. But a quick survey showed that it would overheat too fast and might easily bog down in one of the many soft spots. So they took the four-man, rocket-propelled cargo plane instead.
The ship was airtight and pressurized. They had taken every precaution. The four piled in with their supplies. Then, as the Magellan swooped momentarily lower, the escape hatch opened and, with Ferrati at the controls, the rocket plane shot out with a roar of its exhausts.
They raced low over the burning landscape, and before them the wide, dark, forbidding canyon cut its way through the plain. It was into this canyon that the rocket plunged.
The precipitous rocky sides rose above them, and
suddenly they were in darkness. Immediately, the plane's cooling system became more effective as Ferrati guided the rocket through the shadowy depths away from the blazing sunbeams. Burl saw, by means of the radar, that the bottom of the heat crack was many miles down.
They raced along the crevice until they reached the mountain chain. Here, Ferrati abruptly raised the nose of the plane and they shot upward, popping out of the shadow into the sunlight.
Before them loomed the hard unbroken walls of the Sun-tap station. The rocket plane came to a stop a hundred feet away.
As soon as it had halted, Burl and Ferrati leaped out, with white sheets thrown over their suits to afford some extra protection from the Sun's rays. Between them they carried a long, awkward affair of poles and plastic.
Burl's feet touched the ground; through the cushioned leather of his thick boots he felt the heat just as if he had stepped on a hot stove. He moved quickly, and as they had rehearsed, he and the explore