Archer smiled thinly and shook his head. "Could you be sure that I don't know more about the infection than I've admitted? In which case, it might be a trick to get the globe for myself."
Stokely's face was twisting dangerously again, and Archer went on quickly:
"Better leave us all in the same boat, anyhow—it'll work out better later on."
It was a full, tense minute before Stokely's fury subsided to a point where he could speak.
"I think I'm making a mistake in letting you live," he said thickly. "This plan of yours had better be good. How does it work—with mirrors? Let's have it!"
"Lacking mirrors of a size which would show a good contrast—say about ten feet square," Archer returned calmly, "we'll have to use other means. My plan will give each of us an equal chance, at least. I'll tell you the first part now: we take all the jade we can find around here, before dark if possible, and go back to the ship. I'll tell you the next step when we get there. If that isn't good enough—or if an 80 percent chance is—you can shoot and be damned!"
It was nearly three hours later, very dark and very cold, when they returned to the ship. Archer and Evans carried Dr. Grimwood's body, consigned to the same storage compartment as the dead prospector's. Stokely evidently had not altogether abandoned his original plan for disposing of the evidence. The question now, Archer thought grimly, was how many bodies there would be.
Stokely himself carried the jade, of course. Under his prodding, they had literally left no stone unturned in the vicinity of the deposit. It had yielded nine pieces of varying size and a total weight of perhaps a hundred and fifty carats. They added up to riches beyond imagining.
One of the lockers, as would be expected aboard a prospector's ship, contained an assortment of standard chemicals, and Archer lost no time in locating a bottle of ethyl alcohol. There was also a balance and a set of weights.