It was not enough. Archer resolved to keep his faculties on the alert for any loophole that might occur.
But Stokely's vigilance had not slackened when, hours later, they approached the atmosphere at a speed slightly greater than that of the planet's rotation, and within an estimated five hundred miles of the coordinates shown on the dead men's chart. Stokely left Evans in Dr. Grimwood's chair, with the strict injunction not to remove his eyes from Archer, and took the doctor with him to the engine compartment.
Thereafter, Archer was obliged to give his entire attention to the business of angling the ship sharply into the atmosphere and opposing its thrust to the resultant of deceleration, gravity and air resistance, a function which was only semi-automatic, and needed constant correction.
The first landmark shown on the map, a jagged and mighty canyon, presently appeared between scattered clouds below. Archer set the ship's angle nearer to the horizontal, allowing gravity to pull it into a steeper descent.
The next landmark, a crescent-shaped range of sawtooth mountains near the far end of the canyon, showed up plainly, since shadows were lengthening across the face of the planet. A dozen valleys meandered off from the hills in a southerly direction and Archer aimed for the fourth from the south.
At last, one third of its length from the south end of the valley, the ship stood over the spot corresponding to the X-mark on the map and settled slowly on its jets. According to the scrawled notation, the jade deposit would be not more than half a mile away, near the valley's east wall.
Archer delayed the impatient Stokely long enough to provide Dr. Grimwood and himself with packs of food and water from the ship's stores, trading on the doctor's promise to help locate the jade. Once it was found, Archer did not intend to remain at Stokely's mercy long enough to return to the ship.
All four of the men donned their pressure-suits, primarily as a barrier against the deadly "jade" virus, but incidentally as a protection from all manner of unpleasant insects and tentacular, stinging plants. Also, there was an abundance of scurrying, cold-blooded little horrors, reminiscent of Terran reptiles or batrachians, but by those standards grotesquely misshapen.
Vega VII was a planet whose surface had been prematurely desiccated by a broiling sun, although there was still considerable water available in underground lakes, but the excess of hard radiation had spurred evolutionary processes to improbable extremes.