"'Tain't no small desert, either," chimed McFerson.
"My dear Arlen," Renzu replied, cracking his lips in another of his irritating smiles, "this is one of the most fertile spots on the entire planet. You must remember, Venus is much different from the earth."
Immediately after the landing all hands, including Renzu, were busy with the routine duties that the expedition required. Gheal was given simple tasks, such as unpacking boxes of equipment to be used by the expedition, but the Venusian seemed to attend to these in a preoccupied manner. He worked in sort of a daze, frequently whimpering like a sick dog, and turning his globular eyes from time to time out of the porthole at the landscape of his native planet.
"He's homesick," McFerson suggested to Arlen. "But look! What's he got in his hand?"
It was a long white bar of metal. Arlen quickly seized the bar and examined it. It was pure silver. Gheal had been unpacking a box crammed with silver bars of assorted lengths and thicknesses, ranging from the size of small wire up to rods half an inch thick and a foot or more in length. A fortune in silver had been transported to Venus.
"Well, that's Renzu's business, not mine," Arlen decided.
He returned to his duties. There was much to do: the engines had to be recharged, preparatory to a quick takeoff, should conditions arise to make the planet untenable for earthmen.
Tests of the soil revealed utter sterility of all forms of life. It was baffling. Some sort of bacteria should have been in the soil, even though the place was only a desert.
Arlen opened the arms chest and issued small but powerful atomic disintegrators to McFerson, Renzu and himself. He did not give Gheal one of the weapons, for Gheal did not appear to have the skill necessary to operate it. His uncanny ignorance was so obvious.