I knew real fear then. I looked at the great greenish globe of Earth that grew hourly larger beneath us, and shuddered.... * * * * * Seventeen hours later we were into the ionosphere. My instruments warned that I had just enough thorium left in the pile to keep the _Eagle_ up for another hour and ten minutes. The radar was gone, but the weather-plant was fat and healthy. I tried to pick up a good spot for the landing. The Mojave Desert. Chances for clear weather were better there than anywhere else, though I could guess even then what our chances were. The _Eagle_ shuddered to a vibrating halt, balancing on her tail-flare at about twenty five miles. The gyros were climbing the sonic scale, sending their shrieking whine through every deck of the crippled ship. I looked outside, and cold sweat beaded my face. Even at this height, a fine mist was forming around the _Eagle_. Freed of Venus' formaldehyde atmosphere, our tons of weather-plant were happily doing their job. Drawing water vapor out of Earth's air. It liked fog. _And it could make its own weather!_ I looked at the chronometer. I had just one hour now to get this ship down through this soup that clung to us--without UVR. I had one hour to do the job or gravity would do it for me. I let her slip down to fifteen miles and held there, gyros protesting. The mist thickened. I rang the crash alarm, sending all hands who were not actually engaged in the running of the ship to their quarters and the crash-hammocks. My hands were icy cold. The _Eagle_ sank slowly down to five miles and hung there like a ball bouncing on a jet of water. The mist billowed about us, turning radioactive from the vicious lashing of the tail-flare. I knew that the weather was perfectly clear perhaps two hundred yards away from the ship, but the weather-plant was creating the soggy weather it liked and I was being effectively blindfolded by the-- Blindfolded! I grabbed for the interphone. "Bat!" I yelled, "Bat! Can you see anything below?" Old Bat knew right away what I wanted, but his answer wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Too much metal under me, Morley ... too much metal." His voice was unsteady and seamed with pain. I glanced at the chronometer. Thirty seven minutes left. And the fog clung to the ports. "Morley," Bat sounded something like himself for just a minute. "I've got a notion. Maybe ... maybe it will work. Break out a pressure-suit and get the craneman on the ball. And Morley...." Here I could imagine that he was smiling. "... break out a bottle of the skipper's bonded stuff, will you?" "What are you dreaming up?" I demanded anxiously. "We have to get this cargo down," Bat said thinly. "You remember what the Foundation man said before we left ... people need food, Morley...."