He left the mother ship and headed for Terra; he smiled at the instrument panel and watched the operation of the big scout ship as it rocketed toward the light ribbon of atmosphere that enveloped the planet. It was a joke, in a way. In a manner of speaking, he was the first Terran to fly an alien space ship, but he wasn’t thinking of that. He was thinking of the woman, Elizabeth Danson of Everett, Pennsylvania.
She was waiting.
And he could see the warmth of her body, sheathed in the web-like gown that seemed spun over her turgid breasts and curved hips by an army of artistic spiders. It would not be a hard thing to love a woman like that.
His fingers curled about the controls, his feet working the rudder pedals of the screaming ship as he headed for the strange darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. The space ship was operating well and the Earth lifted her curved bosom to meet his rush.
Trouble came early. The danger lights flickered in his eyes and the fear welled up within him like a flood. Fifteen hundred miles an hour and the scout ship was out of control! The behavior of the craft was erratic, as though a giant hand was slapping the silver belly as he plummeted toward the ball of the earth.
Desperately he tried to reduce the speed of the hurtling ship, his fingers working the buttons and levers in a frenzy of determination. The craft refused to respond. She whipped into a cloud bank, headed for the sea, lifted suddenly and whirled back toward space.
In an agony of fear he realized that he no longer was the master of the space ship - he was a prisoner in a violent, uncontrollable meteor that would finally slam him into infinity against the very earth that was to be home...