Free Donald A. Wollheim (ed) by The Hidden Planet

than
they were when we were coming down," he said deliberately. "But you'd
need a slide-rule and a lot of figures to prove it."
    There was a moment's silence while they
worked out his meaning. Then Glamour threw herself at him, screaming and
scratching at his face, as though he personally were responsible for their
plight.
    Virginia seized his arm as he was fending Glamour off, none too gendy , and pulled him away. "Let's go and check
up," she said. He grinned. Her opinion of him might be dropping, and would
probably drop more very soon, but after all he was the only one with whom she
could talk seriously. The safety of them all depended on him and her.
    She led him back to the observation room.
    "It
can't be as bad as you made out," she said.
    "Why
not?"
    "Surely they must have seen us come
down. There's bound
to be a search. Or at worst, surely one of us can get through
if it's only twenty miles."                                                *
    "I'm
not just deliberately being pessimistic," he said. "I want to live
too. But let's take it from the beginning. The captain would corroborate if he
were here. One, they couldn't see us in Cefor . We
didn't come over it, we were pointing roughly toward it. And they couldn't see
a flaming meteor at five miles, let alone us at twenty. Radar doesn't work in
this soup any more than in water. And a seismograph wouldn't help because
there are so many quakes on
    Venus
no one will be even interested in the shock we made on landing.
    "Two, we were bound for New Paris in the
other hemisphere of Venus, and when a search starts in about twenty-four hours
from now they'll concentrate around there first. At a rough guess it will be
six months before they find this ship. Remember, they've got to explore almost
every inch of ground. A helicopter has to be within a stonesthrow before it can see us."
    The girl stared. "But any time there's a
forced landing the passengers are picked up before there's any real danger-even
if the ship is breached and they have to breathe that poison outside. I always
thought the only danger was getting down safely."
    "Yes," said Warren gendy , "usually. But usually the radio doesn't crack
up first—before the ship. Ours did. So no one knows where we are."
    "Oh. I see. But we can't wait six
months. We'll all be dead in a week. They don't carry much in the way of stores
on these ships."
    He
nodded. "That's about the size of it."
    She shrugged. "Well, we just have to get
on the way to Cefor , then."
    "Not
me. If I'm going to die, I'll die here."
    She shot a puzzled glance at him. "I
don't understand you. You used to be a hero. You've done harder things than
this trek to Cefor . You got medals for it."
    He smiled bleakly. "No, you don't
understand. I told you I was no hero. Before the war I was nothing,
nobody. I'd tried a few things and failed in them all. I tried crime two or
three times, and failed in that too. When the war started I realized it was my
last chance. In peace I had nothing to look forward to but starvation or jail.
So I thought I'd buy me a job. I became a professional hero. I didn't give a damn
if I died. But if I got through I was
pretty sure of some sort of job. Civilians aren't grateful for long, but a
collection of every medal they mint ought to be a recommendation just after the
war, I thought. And I was right. I had my choice of jobs. I joined an importing
firm and I've done well.
    "I was a hero once, but that was when I
had to risk my life to buy a life worth living. I bought it and paid for it.
But when you gamble like that, you do it only once. I'm not going to throw away
all I worked for trying to get through to Cefor .
Sure, I know the Greys . I beat them before. But that
was then. Now I'd rather stay here and take my chance of being rescued than
give them another crack at me."
    She looked steadily at him for a long time. Then she shook her head.
"Maybe I'm wrong to say it," she murmured, "but