All three were securely tied, now, save for their legs. The tallest Titanian, evidently the group chieftain, grunted a word of command. Strong arms prodded Chip and his fellows forward, out of the broken Chickadee, into the bleak landscape of Titania.
They had crashed in the dark spot Chip had viewed from above. They discovered, now, that this spot was dark because—incredibly—here the thick, icy blanket had been stripped away to discover the raw and rocky core of the Uranian moon.
Black rocks thrust jagged spires skyward, mountains of stone girdled this one clear space on the whole of Titania; greater wonder still, gnarled and stunted trees, lichens of hardiest verdure, eked a precarious existence from the grudging soil.
And here the natives had—a village. One coarser, cruder, than the
