The Vanishing Venusians

Harker and his crew look new home in the Sea of Morning Opals on Venus…. excerpt:The breeze was steady enough but it was not in a hurry. It filled the lug sail just hard enough to push the dirty weed-grown hull through the water and no harder. Matt Harker lay alongside the tiller and counted the trickles of sweat crawling over his nakedness and stared with sullen opaque eyes into the indigo night. Anger leashed and impotent rose in his throat like bitter vomit.The sea—Rory McLaren's Venusian wife called it the Sea of Morning Opals—lay unstirring black streaked with phosphorescence. The sky hung low over it the thick cloud blanket of Venus that had made the Sun a half-remembered legend to the exiles from Earth. Riding lights burned in the blue gloom strung out in line. Twelve ships thirty-eight hundred people going no place trapped in the interval between birth and death and not knowing what to do about it.Matt Harker glanced upward at the sail and then at the stern lantern of the ship ahead. His face in the dim glow that lights Venus even at night was a gaunt oblong of shadows and hard bone seamed and scarred with living with wanting and not having with dying and not being dead. He was a lean man wiry and not tall with a snake-like surety of motion.Somebody came scrambling quietly aft along the deck avoiding the sleeping bodies crowded everywhere. Harker said without emotion Hi Rory.Rory McLaren said Hi Matt. He sat down. He was young perhaps half Harker's age. There was still hope in his face but it was growing tired. He sat for a while without speaking looking at nothing and then said Honest to God Matt how much longer can we last?What's the matter kid? Starting to crack?