“A little cylinder about so big.” Feth illustrated. “It comes that way, only in longer sticks — he cuts them into ten sections, and freezes each one up for a separate dose.”
“All right — that’s what I wanted to make sure of. Now, how good are the little refrigerators on those vivaria of mine? Will they freeze air?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You’ll see. Right now, I imagine I have another acting job to do; I don’t suppose anything would stop Drai from going down to the surface of Three, as he said.” Without explaining anything more, Ken headed toward the control room of the interstellar flyer.
He was quite right; the impatient drug-runner had already ordered the pilot down once more. Lee was making no objection this time, though his expression was not actually one of delight. The descent was uneventful, practically a repetition of the earlier one, except that they were homing on the fixed transmitter and consequently were some eight miles east of their former point of landing. They stopped at a height of two miles above the nearest peaks, and looked around for the smoke cloud. Rather to Drai’s disappointment, they saw it; even their eyes could distinguish it from the regular clouds without much difficulty.
“It still seems to be burning,” Ken remarked innocently. “Are we going to drift here in full sight until they put it out?”
“No. We’ll go down and hide.”
“Among the plants? That doesn’t seem to work so well, as a method of concealing this ship.” Drai eyed the scientist for some time, obviously near the limit of exasperation.
“I’m looking after the matter, thank you. The vegetation does not grow everywhere, as even you should be able to see. There, for example.” He pointed to the south. A triangular patch which gave a metallic reflection of the sky light lay in that direction. It was one of those Ken had noticed on his first descent. “We’ll look that over. It seems to be lower than the surrounding territory, and would make a very good hiding place, if it’s really like the sort of ground the flatlanders live on, these other natives may very well avoid it. How about that, scientist?”
“You seem to have some logic on your side,” Ken replied equably. Drai made no answer to this; he simply gestured to Lee, and the pilot obediently slanted their line of descent toward the shiny patch.