I tried to pick up a good spot for the landing. The Mojave Desert. Chances for clear weather were better there than anywhere else, though I could guess even then what our chances were.
The Eagle shuddered to a vibrating halt, balancing on her tail-flare at about twenty five miles. The gyros were climbing the sonic scale, sending their shrieking whine through every deck of the crippled ship. I looked outside, and cold sweat beaded my face. Even at this height, a fine mist was forming around the Eagle.
Freed of Venus' formaldehyde atmosphere, our tons of weather-plant were happily doing their job. Drawing water vapor out of Earth's air. It liked fog. And it could make its own weather!
I looked at the chronometer. I had just one hour now to get this ship down through this soup that clung to us—without UVR. I had one hour to do the job or gravity would do it for me.
I let her slip down to fifteen miles and held there, gyros protesting. The mist thickened. I rang the crash alarm, sending all hands who were not actually engaged in the running of the ship to their quarters and the crash-hammocks. My hands were icy cold.
The Eagle sank slowly down to five miles and hung there like a ball bouncing on a jet of water. The mist billowed about us, turning radioactive from the vicious lashing of the tail-flare.
I knew that the weather was perfectly clear perhaps two hundred yards away from the ship, but the weather-plant was creating the soggy weather it liked and I was being effectively blindfolded by the—
Blindfolded!
I grabbed for the interphone. "Bat!" I yelled, "Bat! Can you see anything below?"
Old Bat knew right away what I wanted, but his answer wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Too much metal under me, Morley ... too much metal." His voice was unsteady and seamed with pain.