Venus was the real surprise parcel of the solar system, and yet, excepting the moon, it was Earth’s nearest neighbor. Mars had been interesting, but you knew too much about it before you got there. You knew the so-called canals were only natural fissures. You knew there were no cities, no traces of human life. Still, it was something to confirm the insect life. But the landscape was pretty flat—in all senses—and there wasn’t a great deal to add to the astronomers’
maps.
Venus was something again: the masked sister to Earth. No one had ever seen her face. She might be an ugly sister—or even more beautiful than Earth. He longed to see behind the mask.
Captain J. Freiburg stared at the dull infra-red screen and at the glowing green radar screen, trying to match the hints of contours. He was scared at the thought of mountain peaks. A level area was practically essential. He decided that if he were reading the screens aright, there were no prominences immediately beneath them.
If there was an underside to the clouds, and time and space to maneuver, he might be able to accomplish a little something with the side jets. Meantime, he could only sit and watch and let the increasing up-pressure try to wrap his chair around his ears.
A glacial age passed. It was all of five minutes long. Then they were in the clouds. By moving his eyes (it was nearly impossible to turn his head) Freiburg could cover all the screens and the porthole. The yellow light deepened to amber. It was like a swift dusk. The photo-electric cell responded and the interior lighting snapped on. Beyond the glare shield the daylight faded to a dull glow. The clouds were something more than just water vapor or carbon dioxide.
Around the height of 17,000 metres, the first explosion happened. A flash somewhere outside sent a brief yellow flare into the cabin. The ship rang like a gong and seemed to jump sidewise. It shook and tilted. The gyroscopes pulled it back on balance.
The same thing happened again. Then again. Yellow flashes and the ship jumping every which way, and the thuds of heavy explosions outside. It was hell to sit there inert as lead, unable to speak. The two men questioned each other with their eyes. What’s happening? What’s gone wrong?
The Captain thought: I’ve misread the screens. I’m trying to set her down on an active volcano. The luck of Jonah.
George thought: What are these clouds made of? Have we started a chemical reaction in them through friction?
There was another flash and jarring shock. Then it began to get lighter outside. The Captain was aware of it although he was concentrating on the altimeter now.
11,000 metres.
There was an underside to the clouds and the ship was falling out of it, ever more slowly. Freiburg stole a look at the TV. The surface of Venus was visible, in a dull gray light, like a rainy late afternoon. There were mountains in the distances, whole ranges of them, white-capped. Below was a rolling plain, dun-colored but with patches of dirty green.
During the moments of his glance, the TV registered a white flash some distance away and below. From the flash a ball of black smoke expanded swiftly and shot out ragged tentacles. The ship’s jets tore into the black wisps and shredded them.
Then he understood. The flashes were shell-bursts. They were being fired at by some archaic anti-aircraft artillery or guided missile battery. The motives might be mad but the effects were comprehensible. He felt calmer. He could see what was happening and knew what he must do; take evasive action.
His finger on the chair-arm switched off automatic control. At the same time he eased his foot onto the pedal governing the speed of efflux ejection. To hell with the computer: he’d handle it himself.
The ship, which had been slowing, dropped suddenly like an elevator starting down. This relief from the overplus of g’s lifted them momentarily from their seats.
“Going… to… land?” George asked, in jerks.
“Have to.” The Captain hadn’t time to explain to a nonspaceman just why you couldn’t reverse a rocket in mid-air and have it lift you out of range. The only chance was this sudden duck under and the hope that the guns—if they were guns—would lose you on the ground. Maybe there was a dip or hollow, some dead ground…
There was small opportunity, though, to look for such a spot. They were approaching the ground much too fast. His foot moved again on the pedal. The impetus was checked with a suddenness which drove the air from their lungs with sharp groans.
The harsh check threw the Captain’s foot away from the pedal. He tried to recover control and his breath simultaneously. The ground was awfully near. He got in a last burst before they hit. It was enough to save their lives. But the impact hurled them from their chairs.
The ship was motionless now, nose-upward, erect. A civilian might have thought everything was fine, no harm done. If necessary, the ship could soon take off again and get to hell out of it.
But Jonah Freiburg knew he had wrecked another ship. If only he hadn’t interfered and so invited his own brand of bad luck. The programmed electronic brain wouldn’t have forgotten to lower the landing gear, the spider-legged shock-absorber.
But Jonah Freiburg had forgotten. Blame it on the stress of being under fire, suddenly and unexpectedly, at the critical moment. Blame it on what you like. But Freiburg knew where the blame should be laid, fairly and squarely: upon his own inadequacy.
He also knew what that impact must have done to the ship’s fins. They weren’t designed to stand up to that sort of thing. If they were bent only a little out of straight, it would be suicide to attempt to take off again. The ship would begin to spin and veer and end up out of control.
Freiburg lay on the floor with his eyes shut. He wished he need never open them again. He felt himself sinking into an abyss of misery. George Starkey crawled over to him, laid a hand on his forehead, began to investigate him cautiously for broken bones. The Captain sighed, opened his reluctant eyes, and sat up wearily.
“I’m okay, George.” It marked the first time he’d used the explorer’s given name. He thought, masochistically: Who am I to claim any kind of authority?
George regarded him critically.
“Don’t look so depressed, Skip. You’re not blaming yourself for anything, are you?”
“I forgot to put out the landing gear, George. I must have smashed the fins up.”
“So? We were being shelled, weren’t we?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Okay, then, you did the only thing. You saved us. You dropped us out of the line of fire. We’d have been blasted to pieces. We may be a little bent, but we’re in one piece, not pieces. You can’t think of everything when things happen too fast.”
“A captain should always think of everything, ” said Freiburg, with slow emphasis. He got up and reached for the microphone. “You there, mister?”
The mate’s voice was a little shaky. “Yes, sir.”
“How’s everyone? Anybody hurt?”
“A few bruises here, sir, that’s all. I don’t know about Firkin yet, though—I’m just going along to check.”
“Right, mister.”
George pulled back the glare screen and looked out on Venus. It was quiet and still out there. The gray clouds hung high overhead, unbroken so far as the eye could see. They looked dark and full. It seemed as though at any moment rain might come lashing down.
But the earth appeared dry and cracked. It was yellow-brown, with patches of thin grass here and there. Also, it was pockmarked with craters, five, ten, twenty metres in diameter. There was no sign of habitation nor of any living creature. The light was too bad to see the horizon distinctly, but a darker blur seemed to lie along it