“Better look at it again,” Rock proposed. “There’s a possibility we might have botched up our figures somehow. If your calculation is right, we’ll all recheck ours.”
Sparky’s math proved to be correct. Then each of the boys went over his own figures again. Halfway through his, Hugh caught an error in his work.
“Take me for a numbskull!” he burst out. “Look what I did! No wonder I flunked out in cadet school!”
“We are too far out from Venus,” Rock told Kalmus. “We’ve got to go in closer to the planet.”
The Dog Star swung into its new orbit. Kalmus became enthusiastic again, and Rock felt that they would meet with success this time, but if they didn’t, there was nothing more to do but admit defeat.
It was Johnny Colfax who first spotted an interesting “blip” on the radarscope screen two space days later. Half the eleven-man crew was asleep, but Johnny’s shouts brought everyone running into the main control room.
“Look, Rock, I think I’ve found it!”
Rock set the telescope in synchronization with the radar set. Then he put his eye to the telescope eyepiece and turned the hairline focus adjustment. Yes, it was really a cigar-shaped craft, man-made, just about the general shape the Northern Cross was supposed to be. It was a streamlined ship built to slide through the atmosphere of Venus.
Rock judged it to be a few hundred miles away. “It seems to be the Northern Cross,” he announced.
“Let me see that thing!” Kalmus blurted and pushed up to the telescope. “There’s our dream ship!” he purred, like a miser over his gold sacks. “I can almost see a dollar sign on that baby!”