Arlen began braking the ship and he called Renzu into the control room for a conference on where to pierce the cloud blanket.
Renzu, huge and muscular, overdid himself in graciousness as he greeted Arlen in the control room. The scientist seemed to radiate exaltation and he strained himself to appear congenial.
The man was excited, Arlen decided, for Arlen himself was thrilled at the prospect of adventure, of seeing strange sights on a strange planet. But the reaction was different in Arlen. Where Renzu swelled and swaggered, Arlen looked dreamily into the clouds ahead.
"I'm bringing the ship around to the sunward side," Arlen said. "It's best to land about noon—that is the noon point. The planet turns once in thirty hours and that will give us a little more than seven hours of daylight to orient ourselves after the landing."
Renzu nodded in agreement. All this had been threshed out before.
"Very well," he said, "but it is best that you pierce the clouds at about forty-five degrees north latitude. There's ocean there that nearly circles the planet and there's fewer chances of running into mountains beneath the clouds. Once we're through the cloud belt, we'll have no difficulty. The clouds are three or four miles above the surface and there's plenty of room to maneuver beneath them."
Arlen twisted the valves and the deceleration became uncomfortably violent. Renzu's first trip had determined the existence of a breathable atmosphere on the surface of Venus, although the cloud belt was filled with gases given off by Venusian volcanoes, and many of these gases were poisonous to man.
In a few minutes the rocket ship stood off just above the cloud belt. McFerson checked the landing mechanism and made his final report to the captain. Arlen checked the gravity gauge, which now would be used as an altimeter during the blind flying in the Venusian clouds.
"Okay!" Captain Arlen called.
"Okay!" echoed McFerson.