A sudden, furious hissing burst out beneath her, as the compressed-air valves were thrown and the air-cushions formed beneath her thousands of spiracles.

Then, with hardly a shudder, easily as a tired gull slips down into the quiet of a still lagoon, the vast air-liner took earth.
She slid two hundred yards on her air-cushions, over the close-cropped turf, slowed, came to rest there fronting the northern gate of Bara Jannati Shahr.

And the shimmer of those golden walls, one mile to east of her, painted her all a strangely luminous yellow.
Journey's end, at last!.