Details from Operations were slight The M.R.S. Gary had radioed for help claiming to be imperilled by a native 'uprising. She had given her position, then radio contact had I "en lost.
Yancey elected to use atmospheric braking in any case to save his reaction mass for future use-otherwise the Aes Triplex might have circled Venus until she could be scored. The ship's company spent a crowded, tiring fifty-ix hours shut up in the control room while the ship dipped to the clouds of Venus and out again, a bit deeper and bit slower on each round trip. The ship grew painfully >t and the time spent in free space on each lap was hard enough to let her radiate what she picked up. Most of 10 ship was intolerably hot, for the control room and the alarm" were refrigerated at the expense of the other spaces. In space, there is no way to get rid of unwanted heat, permanently, except by radiation-and the kinetic energy difference between the original orbit and the circum-Venus
orbit the Captain wanted had to be absorbed as heat, a piece at a time, then radiated into space.
But at the end of that time three hot, tired, but very excited, young men, with one a little older, were ready to climb into jeep no. 2.
Matt suddenly remembered something. "Oh, Doctor-Doctor Pickering!" The surgeon had spent a medically uneventful voyage writing a monograph entitled "Some Notes on Comparative Pathologies of the Inhabited Planets" and was now at loose ends. He had relieved Matt as "farmer."
"Yes, Matt?"
"Those new tomato plants-they have to be cross-pollinated three days from now. You'll do it for me? You won't forget?"
"Can do!" ;
Captain Yancey guffawed. "Get your feet out of this furrows, Dodson. Forget the farm-we'll look out for it. Now,| gentlemen-" He looked around and caught their eyes. "Try to stay alive. I doubt very much if this mission warrants expending four Patrol officers."
As they filed in Tex dug Matt in the ribs. "Did you hear ] that, kid-'four Patrol officers.' " >