The interior of the study had been
darkened with drawn shades; now he was using eyes that were exposed to
the most intense sunlight. The first sight that he got, in fact, was
directed toward the sky; and he noted with an engineer's keen interest
that the color of the sky was blue, slightly tinged with orange. This,
he knew, meant that the atmosphere of Sanus contained at least one
chemical element which is lacking on the earth.
For a minute or two the sky remained entirely clear. There were no
clouds whatever; neither did any form of winged life make its
appearance. So Smith took note of sounds.
Presumably his agent--whoever or whatever it might be--was located in
some sort of aircraft; for an extremely loud and steady buzzing,
suggesting a powerful engine, filled the engineer's borrowed ears. Try
as he might, however, he could not identify the sound exactly. It was
more like an engine than anything else, except that the separate sounds
which comprised the buzz occurred infinitely close together. Smith
concluded that the machine was some highly developed rotary affair,
working at perhaps six or eight thousand revolutions a minute--three or
four times as fast as an ordinary engine.
Meanwhile his agent continued to stare into the sky.
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