Once again, interesting in that while we have starships, and astronomers doing some scouting ahead to decide what planets to visit, we have the starship directly landing on the planet and we have no remote sensing of the planet surface from the starship as it orbits above before it lands. And, once again, no feeling of computers doing any information processing.
In this case, we even have a scientist dealing with photographic plates, not even film, and not a thought of digital processing. And little concept of redundancy or being far away from backup support. In fact, at the start the crew acts as if it's landed at a tropical island after a long sea voyage -- some of the crew are sneaking off ahead of the departure of the main landing party. This is partly plot device, but it fits in well with the relationships built up throughout the story.
This story has some Star Trek style interracial harmony elements -- Negroes and Martians -- but all the crew are male. The concept that controls on heavy equipment can be designed for women's use as well, so that women can do space flight and exploring as well as men can, and want to, is still thirty years to come. (Star Trek is sixties)
Also, somewhat anticipating Star Trek again, the captain/crew relation feels more civilian and less military than in other stories in this collection. The captain and crew are not expecting a flogging from getting caught at minor disobedience.
There is some concept of Martian atmosphere being different from Earth's, but it's way off reality, even for what was known in that day, I suspect. The Martians like 3PSI atmosphere, not the 15PSI that is Earth standard. And there is no mention of it being mostly CO2. Also, extra O2 acts like a fierce stimulant. The ship is equipped with anti-gravity, but not much explanation about how it works. There is less concern about the poisoning effects of... atomics as it is called in this story.
The social relations in this story seem more like a science team than a military team, and I like that. There is more equality of exchange among the team members.
Ah... Now I remember! This story became the inspiration for a couple of my D&D scenarios. The monsters in this, particularly the veggie monsters, were memorable and original enough that they became the heart of Land of the Veggie People in my "Valley of the Jolly Jade Giant" scenario. And this scenario was my second most popular -- after my "Orthanc" dungeon scenario.
He uses the comic effect of multiple phones. This has to be near the end of that period.
For a seasoned crew on a seasoned explorer ship, the ship designers and this crew make a lot of mistakes when they open the lock to find out who's knocking on the outside, but the scene reads well. Likewise, the planet's natives seem to figure out the ship architecture real quickly. But the ecosystem is nicely original.
The scout ship went out and came back on a brief journey. In spite of the fact that they are traveling over thick jungle forest mixed with glades, Russell has the crew member report, "No signs of life."--meaning animate animal life. It is odd that this semi- or full scientist was not counting lush plant life as a sign of life.
Another cliche, this one repeated in Stargate SG-1, is having a security door protected with a person manning a gun. This is a great temporary measure, but if this door is routinely facing violent hazard there are many, many better ways to protect it. One example being: Add a second closed door, watch the resulting chamber from some kind of window, and equip the chamber with numerous nasty devices such as gas and electricity. In this case, though, the cliche serves well by leading to a long and interesting description of a native/spacer battle around the door.
Interesting... even in this early era pompoms had ergonomic appeal as a firing weapon. In the seventies Lucas uses them in Stars Wars. (checked in Wikipedia, the nickname dates back to the Second Boer War, around 1900. Various quick firing light cannon have acquired it since then.)
Interesting... there is a passing reference that the ship is privately financed. This is an exploring merchant ship of the future, not a government or military ship.
Inconsistency: Burning rocket power to take off, but not to land.