"Yeah, but look what else he said." :
Thurlow tucked his orders in his pouch. They were simple: proceed to latitude north two degrees seven, longitude two hundred twelve degrees zero; locate the Gary and investigate reported native uprising. Keep the peace.
The lieutenant settled himself and looked around at his crew. "Hold your hats, boys. Here we go!"
XIV "THE NATIVES ARE FRIENDLY ..."
WITH THUHLOW at the controls and Matt in the co-pilot's seat the jeep started down. It started with an orbital speed of better than four miles per second, the speed of the AeS
Triplex in her tight circular orbit around the equator of Venus. The lieutenant's purpose was to kill this speed exactly over his destination, then balance the jeep down on its tail. A jet landing was necessary, as the jeep had no wings.
He needed to do this precisely, with the least use of fuel. He was helped somewhat by riding "with the current" from west to east; the 940-mile-per- hour rotational speed of Venus at her equator was profit rather than loss. However, exact placement was another matter. A departure time was selected so that the entire descending curve would be on the day side of the planet in order to use the Sun as a reckoning point for placement in longitude; placement in latitude would have to depend on dead reckoning by careful choice of course.
The Sun is the only possible celestial body to use in air navigation at Venus, and even Sol is lost to the naked eye :is soon as one is inside the planet-wide blanket of cloud. Matt "shot the Sun" by keeping one eye glued on the eyepiece of an infra-red adapter which had been fitted to the ship's octant, and was enabled thereby to coach his skipper from a prepared flight plan. It had not been considered practical to cut a cam for the automatic robot; too little was known about the atmospheric conditions to be expected.
When Matt informed his pilot that they were about thirty miles up, by radar, and approaching the proper longitude, is given by the infra-red image of the Sun, Thurlow brought I lie jeep down toward their target, ever lower and slower, and finally braked her with the jet to let her drop in a parabola distorted by air resistance.
They were enveloped in the ever-present Venerian clouds. The pilot's port was utterly useless to them. Matt now larded watching the surface under them, using an infrared-sensitive "cloud piercer."