thousand years. I must pray those bottles are
full."
20 When they finally entered orbit, the ship's telescopes and sensors
searched the territory below, their communication's beam swept the
surface, trying to trigger any automatic response. But for twelve
frustrating orbits they found nothing.
21 Then, the Firing Control Officer cried, "I've got them! It's GOT to
be them! There's a large shape buried in the snow on that high plateau
and what looks like a primitive solar generator nearby."
22 Morn had the images put on the main screen. They overlaid it with an
outline of a pod of that era. It certainly looked
right! "Number Two," he ordered, "take the deck. Landing party to the
scout ship. I'm leading it down myself. Stand by, gentlemen. Hopefully
we'll be calling up with some good news in a short while."
23 Morn and seven companions squeezed into the scout. It slipped from
the bay and dropped slowly through the planet's atmosphere, swinging
around gradually to come up on the plateau.
24 When they got closer, their suspicions about the structure on the
surface proved correct. It was a solar generator, rather sophisticated,
from the look of it. The wiring from it disappeared into an
ice tunnel leading to where
the pod was buried. They sat down by the tunnel's entrance, and Morn
and his party emerged.
25 "A couple of you stay here," he commanded. "Vaporize some of this
ice. We need more room to move around , and I'd like to have the
landing area level with the tunnel entrance."
26 Two men remained behind. With the scout's weaponry it would take
them only a short time to complete this work. Morn and the others
cautiously approached the tunnel, made their way down it, and found a
closed hatch, beside which the power cables entered the pod.