Planter leaned toward the instrument panel that covered most of the bulkhead to the right of his hammock. The pale glow from the dials highlighted his face, young, bony, intent. “Blast-tempo adequate,” he called back to Disbro. “Lubrication-loss about seven point two. Three point nine six degrees off sunward. Air loss nil.”
“Who asked for air loss?” snubbed Disbro from his hammock forward. He was leaner than Planter, taller, older. Even in his insulated coveralls, bulking against whatever temperature or pressure danger might be threatened by the outer space, he was of a dangerous elegance of figure and attitude. His face, framed in tight, cushioned helmet, was so narrow that it seemed compressed sidewise—dark eyes crowded together with only a disdainful blade of nose between them, a mouth short but strong, a chin like the pointed toe of a stylish boot, a cropped black mustache. Back on lost Earth, Disbro had frightened men and fascinated women. His cunning crime-administration had been almost too neat for the police, but not quite; or he would not have been here, with his life barely held in his elegant fingertips.
“Venus plumb center ahead,” he told Planter. “Have a look.”
That last as if he were granting a favor. Planter twisted in the hammock. He saw the taut-slung cocoon that would be Disbro’s netted body, the control board like a bigger, more complex typewriter where Disbro could reach and strike key-combinations to steer, speed or otherwise maneuver the ship.
Beyond, a great round port, at its middle a disk the size of a tabletop. Against the black, airless sky, most of that disk looked as blue as the thinnest of milk. One smooth edge was brightened to cream—the sunward limb of Venus. But even the dimmer expanse showed fluffy and gently rippling, a swaddling of opaque cloud.
“That,” said Disbro, “is our little gray home in the west.”
“I wonder what’s underneath the clouds,” mused Planter, for the millionth time.
“All those science-pots, sitting home on the seats of their expensive striped pants, wonder that,” snarled Disbro. “That’s why they sent eight rockets before us, smack into the cloud. That’s why, with eight silences out of a possible eight, they rigged this ninth. That’s why, when nobody was fool enough to volunteer, they dug up three convicts who were all neatly earmarked to be killed anyway, and gave them a bang at the job.”
Three convicts—Planter, Disbro, and Max. Planter had forgotten Max, as everyone was apt to, including Max himself. For Max had been a sturdy athlete, a coming heavyweight champion, until too many gaily-accepted blows had done something to his mind. Doctors said some concussion unbalanced him, but not far enough so that he didn’t know right and wrong apart when he killed his manager for cheating on certain gate receipts. And so, prison and a sentence to the chair with the reprieve that came by recommendation of the Rocket Foundation on March 30, 2082. Now Max was in the compartment aft, keeping the levers kicking that ran the rocket engines. Show Max how to do a thing and he’d keep right on doing it until you pulled him away, or until he dropped.
What would Max’s last name be, wondered Planter. He studied the face of Venus. He sang to himself, softly:
“Oh, thou sublime sweet evening star. …”
Softly, but not too softly for Disbro’s excellent ears. Disbro chuckled.
“You know opera, Planter? Pretty fancy for an ex-con.”
“I know that piece,” said Planter shortly. “Wolfram’s hymn to Venus, from Tannhauser.”
It had started him thinking again. Gwen had played it so often on her violin. Played it and sung it. Those were the days he hadn’t known she was married, down in her red-and-gold apartment in the Artists Quarter. He’d been sculpting her—she’d had the second best figure he ever saw. Then he found out about her husband, for the husband burst in upon them. The husband had tried to kill Planter, but Planter had killed the husband. And Gwen had sworn his life away.
“Check elapsed time,” Disbro bade him.
“Fifty-eight days nine hours and fifty-four minutes point seven,” rejoined Planter at once.
“Prompt, aren’t you? We’ll be on Venus before the sixty-fourth day.” Planter saw Disbro shift over in his hammock. “I’m going to shave. Then eat.”
Disbro turned a stud in the wall. His electric razor began to hum. Planter opened a locker-valve and brought forth his own rations—a package of concentrated solid, compounded of chocolate, meat extract, several vitamin agents. It would sustain him for hours, but was anything but a fill to his hunger. He chewed it slowly to make it last longer, and sipped from a snipe-nosed container of water, slightly effervescent and acidulated. A few drops escaped between snout and lip, and swam lazily in the gravityless air of the cabin, like shiny little bubbles.
“Planter,” said Disbro, suddenly pleasant, “we’re going to fool ’em.”
He shut off his razor. Planter took another nibble. “Yes, Disbro?”
“We’ll land at the north pole.”
Planter shook his head. “We can’t. This rocket is set at midpoint on the Venusian disk.”
“We can. I’ve tinkered with the controls. A break for us, no break for the Foundationeers at home. They’re watching us through telescopes. What they want is our crash on Venus, with a great upflare of the exploding fuel. Then they’ll know that we landed, and can shake hands all ’round on a ‘successful advancement.’ But we’re curving away, then in. I’ve fixed that. We’ll not blow off and make any signal; but we’ll live.”
“North pole,” mused Planter, pensively.
“No spin to Venus up there. We’ll land solidly. We’ll land where it’s coolest, and none too cool. Her equator must be two degrees hotter than Satan’s reception hall. The pole may be endurable.”
“What then?” asked Planter.
“We’ll live, I say. Don’t you want to live?”
Planter hadn’t thought about it lately. But suddenly he knew that he did want to live. His was a family of considerable longevity. His grandfather had attained the age of one hundred and seven, and had claimed to remember the
