"It would take the best part of fifty thousand credits to get the Space Lark ready for a trip like that," Mallard said doubtfully.
"And I've got twice that, right here in my pocket, chum." Bill Olger reached into his pocket and handed something to Mallard under cover of the table. Something that was smooth and round and hard. Mallard held it below the level of the table top and looked. Then he drew in his breath as sharply as if he had been hit in the stomach.
At first glance, the thing looked like a large and very perfect Terran fire opal. But no opal ever gleamed with the unbelievably sultry fires that lived in this stone. It looked as though every sun of the Galaxy were imprisoned within its depths. George Mallard looked at the rhizoid in his hand for a moment longer, then turned to Bill Olger. When he spoke, his voice was shaky.
"We can be ready to blast off in forty-eight hours."
The Swamp Belt of Mercury! Mallard looked at the almost impenetrable growth of tangled fern trees and undergrowth and swore wearily. They had been here for three weeks, now, and it had been three weeks of pure, unadulterated hell. The dank, steamy air made every breath a painful effort and, day and night, giant insects made their life miserable. They could take the miniature Overton ray gun a little way into the swamp belt but at every step they had to be on the alert for the great reptiles that floundered through the dense undergrowth. And even more, for the deadly plant life that lay in wait.
And always they were under watch from the natives. Scaly-hided men, not much past the anthropoid stage, but the crude wooden spears they used could be very dangerous. The Overton ray gun was scaled down to near zero for use against the fungus stumps but it could be turned up to full power for its original use as a weapon. And the gun had saved their lives on more than one occasion when those wooden spears began to fly past them. It was a tense, miserable life.
But they did find the rhizoids. Not as many as they had hoped for, because the Overton gun could be taken into the swamp belt only a little way, but they found far, far more than had ever been brought out before. Day after day the tiny hoard of stones grew. Night after night the three men sat around the cabin of the Space Lark, gloating over them. At least Bill Olger and the Martian D'ulio did. Only Mallard was sullen and dissatisfied. Once he put his feelings into words.
"Look. You two are all steamed up because we've got a handful of these things. A handful that's got to be divided three ways. Do you know how long your share's going to last once you hit the bright lights in Venusport? Well, I'll tell you. A year, two years. Maybe three years if you're careful. You might be satisfied with that but I'm not. Me, I want those hundreds of millions we were talking about when we started this thing. Yes, and if I can figure out some way of getting further into this damned swamp I'll get them, too."
Olger looked at him in unconcealed disgust. "I can understand a man being a bum loser, Mallard, but not a bum winner. You know that we've already gone as far into the swamp belt as we can with the Overton and if you think I'm going into that hellhole without the ray gun, you're crazy. It makes my skin crawl to think of the narrow escapes we've had, even with it. Be reasonable, fella."