The Santa Maria had touched down about twenty-five kilometres south of the ring complex. Everyone began to fumble at the straps of their contour-berths on the navigation deck.Conrad, space veteran that he was, made every movement slowly and deliberately, giving his limbs time to adjust to a gravity that was more than ninety per cent as strong as that of Terra.Uhlmann and Khelad fairly leaped out of their contour-berths—and fell flat on their faces.Conrad gazed down at them benignly. “More haste, less speed. Your muscles are in lousy shape. All our muscles are in lousy shape. We are all going to have to tone them up before we get out of the air-lock.”Kwango got out of his berth without any difficulty. “O.K. if I roll back the screen and take a look through the observation panel, Commander?”“In a minute, Kurt. General orders first. The day on Tantalus lasts twenty-three hours seven minutes, Standard Earth Time. While the robots make preliminary surveys of our immediate vicinity, we will get ourselves back to a state of operational efficiency in a fairly strong G field.
