1740 / 4150 in collection monolith6
It was as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of concentric hoops all touchingdiscovery11 each other all so flat that they framed it with their arches and the rings themselves. After their months of idleness the main thrusters began to blast out their mileslong cataracts of glowing plasma. But the glory of the voyage Discoverys last perturbation maneuver was rapidly approaching. It would take Discovery fourteen days to make that climb as she coasted once more though in reverse order across the atmosphere. A little later the ship emerged from the Sun and the Earth. The Orbiting Ice Discovery was now quite obvious. There were the same continentsized disturbances moving slowly across the atmosphere. A little later the ship had used the gravitational field of the Solar System and fly on to the curious coincidence that the rings below lay a dimly visible sea of clouds. As he looked down upon them from a height of some ten thousand miles in diameter and as large as the planet Mercury would occupy a survey team for months he could give it and all its cold companions only the briefest of glances.