Passing along one of B-deck corridors one day, Gerry met Olga Stark coming out of the recreation rooms. She was off duty at the moment, and instead of her uniform she wore a long gown of green silk. Her dark hair was surmounted by a polished metal cap, and a thin gauze veil hung to her chin. Gerry stopped her with a gesture.
"Very decorative, Lieutenant," he said with a twitch of his lips, "but this is supposed to be a scientific expedition. I must ask that you wear your uniform outside of your cabin."
"I am off duty!" she retorted, her dark eyes suddenly angry and sullen.
"It's true that you're not on watch at this moment, but everybody is on duty twenty-four hours a day till this expedition is over. Resume your uniform."
"And if I refuse?" she asked.
"You'll go into double irons. When I'm commanding a ship, I do just that!"
For a moment their glances met, the woman's hot and angry, the man's cold and unyielding. Then, without another word, she swept away to her cabin. Gerry Norton sighed, and went on his way. He had never become entirely reconciled to the presence of women in the Interplanetary Fleet. They made good officers most of the time, but occasionally they had fits of feminine temperament.
At last there came the day when the yellowish, cloud-veiled mass of Venus filled half the sky ahead. Watches were doubled up. Rocket motors were cut down as the attraction of the planet pulled them onward. Then the forward rocket-tubes began to let go for the braking effect, and the flame of the discharges filled the control room with a flickering yellow light.
As they entered the outer atmosphere layers of Venus, the effect of air on the sun's rays gave them natural sunlight and blue skies again for the first time in over six weeks. Something about the effect of yellow sunlight slanting in the portholes raised the spirits of all of them, and men were whistling as they went about their work. Gerry brought the ship to a halt a few thousand feet above the endless, tumbled mass of clouds that eternally covered all of Venus. They were now near enough to be fully caught in the rotation of the planet's stratosphere, so that they had normal night and day instead of the eternal midnight that had gripped them for weeks.