Although the four men were still in radio contact, having decided to keep their pressure-suits on until the air "cleared," nobody spoke for a while. Archer lolled his leaden cranium sideways on its rest, to see the rim of the planet looming hugely in the side ports. The ship would be reaching the near-point in another hour.
"They must have been pushing off at well over two G," he said, "for their momentum to have carried them out as far as it did. They made a big loop."
Dr. Grimwood smiled wryly. "I imagine they were impatient. How would you feel with a negotiable fortune as a cargo?"
"You might say," returned Archer, "how do I feel? That leftover you're holding must be 30 or 40 carats. I'll be glad enough to turn it over to the company and let them find out about salvage rights, if any. Frankly, I'm just a little afraid of the stuff. Its value seems to be of slightly lethal proportions."
"True," sighed the doctor, "but there's a great temptation to stop off at that find and sneak a hunk of it for some friends of mine. They'd get a bigger kick out of pulverizing it with a mallet than they would buying castles on Arcturus IV."
Under the onus of triple weight, the hour that followed seemed much longer. At last the ship cleared the dangerous fringe of atmosphere by a good thousand miles, and Archer aimed her nose at the retreating rim of the planet, reducing deceleration to a very tolerable 1.5 G.
"We'll swing pretty wide," he said to the others. "It'll be nine or ten hours before we get back in at a safe speed. If you fellows don't mind, I'm going to shuck this suit and catch a nap right here in this chair. I'm all in. I'd advise you, Stokely, to do the same. We may need to be on our toes later—this job won't practically land itself like the one we're used to!"
A few hours later, Will Archer was pacing a broad marble courtyard inlaid with Farian jade, in a kingly castle on Arcturus IV, when a rough hand on his shoulder shook him awake. It was Stokely, with his gun in his hand and an ugly smile on his rather handsome, freckled face. He motioned derisively toward Dr. Grimwood, who was bound securely to his chair.