He did not notice the noise of the sling again in motion behind him. He
was all eyes and ears and acute awareness of the completely strange
environment. He was the more conscious of a general strangeness because
he was so completely an urban product. Yet he and Holden were vastly
less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous
generations would have been. They did not notice the oddity of croaking
sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree-tops. When they had threaded
their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot
and merely toasted foliage all around, Cochrane heard a sweet,
high-pitched trilling which came from a half-inch hole in the ground.
But he was not astonished by the place from which the trilling came. He
was astonished at the sound itself.
There was a cry behind them.
_"Mr. Cochrane! Doctor Holden!"_
They swung about. And there was Babs on the ground, just disentangling
herself from the sling. She had followed them out, after waiting until
they had left the airlock and could not protest.
Cochrane swore to himself. But when Babs joined them breathlessly, after
a hopping run over the hot ground, he said only:
"Fancy meeting you here!"
"_I--I couldn't resist it_," said Babs in breathless apology.
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