There was no longer a sensation of the ground trembling underfoot.  Now the noticeable sensation was when the ground was still.  Temblors were practically continuous.  There were distinct sharp impacts, as of violent blows nearby.

Babs stared, fascinated.  She glanced up at Cochrane.  His skin was white.  There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

“We’re safe here, aren’t we?” she asked, scared.

“I think so.  But I’m not going to take you through falling trees while this is going on!  There’s another tree down!  I’m worrying about the ship!  If it topples—.”

She looked at the nose of the space-ship, gleaming silver metal, rising from the trees about the landing-spot it had burned clear.  A third of its length was visible.

“If it topples,” said Cochrane, “we’ll never be able to take off.  It has to point up to lift.”

Babs looked from the ship to him, and back again.  Then her eyes went fearfully to the remote mountain.  Rumblings came from it now.  They were not loud.  They were hardly more than dull growlings, at the lower limit of audible pitch.  They were like faint and distant thunder.  There were flashings like lightning in the cloud which now enveloped the mountain’s top.

Cochrane made an indescribable small sound.  He stared at the ship.  As explosion-waves passed over the ground, a faint, unanimous movement of the treetops became visible.  It seemed to Cochrane that the space-ship wavered as if about to fall from its upright position.

It was not designed to stand such violence as a fall would imply.  Its hull would be dented or rent.  It was at least possible that its fuel-store would detonate.  But even if its fall were checked by still-standing trees about it, it could never take off again.  The eight humans of its company could never juggle it back to a vertical position.  Rocket-thrust would merely push it in the direction its nose pointed.  Toppled, its rocket-thrust would merely shove it blindly over stones and trees and to destruction.

The ship swayed again.  Visibly.  Ground-waves made its weight have the effect of blows.  Part of its foundation rested on almost-visible stone, only feet below the ground-level.  But one of the landing-fins rested on humus.  As the shocks passed, that fin-foot sank into the soft soil.  The space-ship leaned perceptibly.

Flying creatures darted back and forth above the tree-tops.  Miles away, insensate violence reigned.  Clouds of dust and smoke shot miles into the air, and half a mountainside glowed white-hot, and there was the sound of long-continued thunder, and the ground shook and quivered....

There were movements nearby.  A creature with yellow fur and the shape of a bear with huge ears came padding out of the forest.  It swarmed up the bare stone of the hill on which Babs and Cochrane stood.

It ignored them.  Halfway up the unwooded part of the hill, it stopped and made plaintive, high-pitched noises.  Other creatures came.  Many had come while the man and girl were too absorbed to notice.  Now two more of the large animals came out into the open and climbed the hill.