HAMILTON HAMMOND started nervously as the voice of Cullen, the expedition’s chemist, sounded from his station aft. ‘I see something!’ he called. Ham bent over the floor port, staring into the eternal green-gray fog that blankets Uranus. He glanced hastily at the dial of the electric plumb; fifty- five feet, it said with an air of positiveness, but that was a lie, for it had registered that same figure for a hundred and sixty miles of creeping descent. The fog itself reflected the beam. The barometer showed 86.2 cm. That too was an unreliable guide, but better than the plumb, for the intrepid Young, four decades earlier in 2060, had noted an atmospheric pressure of 86 in his romantic dash from Titan to the cloudy planet’s southern pole. But the Gaea was dropping now at the opposite pole, forty-five thousand miles from Young’s landing, and no one knew what vast hollows or peaks might render his figures utterly useless…
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