For three days Sutton toiled to free the ship from the tons of sand that the treacherous, swift-running river currents had mounded over it. And admitted, when three days were gone, that it was a hopeless task, for the current piled up the sand as fast as he could clear it.
From there on he concentrated on clearing an opening to the entrance lock, and after another day and many cave-ins, he accomplished his purpose.
Wearily he braced himself against the metal of the ship.
A gamble, he told himself. But I will have to gamble.
For there was no possibility of wrenching the ship free by using the engines. The tubes, he knew, were packed with sand and any attempt to throw in the rockets would simply mean that he and the ship and a good portion of the landscape would evaporate in a flashing puff of atomic fury.
He had lifted a ship from a Cygnian planet and driven it across eleven years of space by the power of mind alone. He had rolled two sixes.
Perhaps, he told himself. Perhaps…
There were tons of sand, and he was deathly tired, tired despite the smooth, efficient functioning of his nonhuman system of metabolism.
I rolled two sixes, he said.
Once I rolled two sixes and surely that was harder than the task I must do now. Although that called for deftness and this will call for power…and suppose, just suppose I haven't got the strength.