Black velvet infinity all around, punctured and patterned with the many-hued jewels of space—comforting, somehow, because they made the same constellation patterns you used to see on Earth. There was the Dipper, there Scorpio, there Orion. But the twinkle was shut off, as though every star had turned cold and silently watchful toward your impudent invasion of emptiness.

So big was the universe that the little recess which did duty for control-room, observation-point and living-cabin seemed even smaller than it was; which was very small indeed. Planter forgot the dizzy lightness of head and body, here beyond gravity, and turned his wondering eyes outward from where he lay strapped in his spring-jointed hammock, toward the firmament, and decided that there was nothing in all his past life that he would change if he could.

"Check blast-tempo," came the voice of Disbro just beyond his head, a high, harsh, commanding voice. "Check lubrication-loss and check sun-direction. Then brace yourself. We may land quicker than we thought."

Planter leaned toward the instrument panel that covered most of the bulkhead to the right of his hammock. The pale glow from the dials highlighted his face, young, bony, intent. "Blast-tempo adequate," he called back to Disbro. "Lubrication-loss about seven point two. Three point nine six degrees off sunward. Air loss nil."

"Who asked for air loss?" snubbed Disbro from his hammock forward. He was leaner than Planter, taller, older. Even in his insulated coveralls, bulking against whatever temperature or pressure danger might be threatened by the outer space, he was of a dangerous elegance of figure and attitude. His face, framed in tight, cushioned helmet, was so narrow that it seemed compressed sidewise—dark eyes crowded together with only a disdainful blade of nose between them, a mouth short but strong, a chin like the pointed toe of a stylish boot, a cropped black mustache. Back on lost Earth, Disbro had frightened men and fascinated women. His cunning crime-administration had been almost too neat for the police, but not quite; or he would not have been here, with his life barely held in his elegant fingertips.

"Venus plumb center ahead," he told Planter. "Have a look."

That last as if he were granting a favor. Planter twisted in the hammock. He saw the taut-slung cocoon that would be Disbro's netted body, the control board like a bigger, more complex typewriter where Disbro could reach and strike key-combinations to steer, speed or otherwise maneuver the ship.

Beyond, a great round port, at its middle a disk the size of a table-top. Against the black, airless sky, most of that disk looked as blue as the thinnest of milk. One smooth edge was brightened to cream—the sunward limb of Venus. But even the dimmer expanse showed fluffy and gently rippling, a swaddling of opaque cloud.

"That," said Disbro, "is our little gray home in the west."

"I wonder what's underneath the clouds," mused Planter, for the millionth time.

"All those science-pots, sitting home on the seats of their expensive striped pants, wonder that," snarled Disbro. "That's why they sent eight rockets before us, smack into the cloud. That's why, with eight silences out of a possible eight, they rigged this ninth. That's why, when nobody was fool enough to volunteer, they dug up three convicts who were all neatly earmarked to be killed anyway, and gave them a bang at the job."

Three convicts—Planter, Disbro, and Max. Planter had forgotten Max, as everyone was apt to, including Max himself. For Max had been a sturdy athlete, a coming heavyweight champion, until too many gaily-accepted blows had done something to his mind. Doctors said some concussion unbalanced him, but not far enough so that he didn't know right and wrong apart when he killed his manager for cheating on certain gate receipts. And so, prison and a sentence to the chair with the reprieve that came by recommendation of the Rocket Foundation on March 30, 2082. Now Max was in the compartment aft, keeping the levers kicking that ran the rocket engines. Show Max how to do a thing and he'd keep right on doing it until you pulled him away, or until he dropped.

What would Max's last name be, wondered Planter. He studied the face of Venus. He sang to himself, softly:

"Oh, thou sublime sweet evening star...."

Softly, but not too softly for Disbro's excellent ears. Disbro chuckled.

"You know opera, Planter? Pretty fancy for an ex-con."

"I know that piece," said Planter shortly. "Wolfram's hymn to Venus, from Tannhauser."

It had started him thinking again. Gwen had played it so often on her violin. Played it and sung it. Those were the days he hadn't known she was married, down in her red-and-gold apartment in the Artists Quarter. He'd been sculpting her—she'd had the second best figure he ever saw. Then he found out about her husband, for the husband burst in upon them. The husband had tried to kill Planter, but Planter had killed the husband. And Gwen had sworn his life away.

"Check elapsed time," Disbro bade him.

"Fifty-eight days nine hours and fifty-four minutes point seven," rejoined Planter at once.

"Prompt, aren't you? We'll be on Venus before the sixty-fourth day." Planter saw Disbro shift over in his hammock. "I'm going to shave. Then eat."

Disbro turned a stud in the wall. His electric razor began to hum. Planter opened a locker-valve and brought forth his own rations—a package of concentrated solid, compounded of chocolate, meat extract, several vitamin agents. It would sustain him for hours, but was anything but a fill to his hunger. He chewed it slowly to make it last longer, and sipped from a snipe-nosed container of water, slightly effervescent and acidulated. A few drops escaped between snout and lip, and swam lazily in the gravityless air of the cabin, like shiny little bubbles.

"Planter," said Disbro, suddenly pleasant, "we're going to fool 'em."

He shut off his razor. Planter took another nibble. "Yes, Disbro?"

"We'll land at the north pole."

Planter shook his head. "We can't. This rocket is set at mid-point on the Venusian disk."

"We can. I've tinkered with the controls. A break for us, no break for the Foundationeers at home. They're watching us through telescopes. What they want is our crash on Venus, with a great upflare of the exploding fuel. Then they'll know that we landed, and can shake hands all 'round on a 'successful advancement.' But we're curving away, then in. I've fixed that. We'll not blow off and make any signal; but we'll live."

"North pole," mused Planter, pensively.

"No spin to Venus up there. We'll land solidly. We'll land where it's coolest, and none too cool. Her equator must be two degrees hotter than Satan's reception hall. The pole may be endurable."

"What then?" asked Planter.

"We'll live, I say. Don't you want to live?"

Planter hadn't thought about it lately. But suddenly he knew that he did want to live. His was a family of considerable longevity. His grandfather had attained the age of one hundred and seven, and had claimed to remember the end of the Second World War.

"Six days to study it over," Disbro was saying. "Then we'll have a try. If we land alive, we'll laugh. If we die trying, we'll have nothing to worry about. Float up here, will you? Take over. I'm going to have a little sleep."

Through choking steam, white and ever-swirling, drove the silvery cigar that was the ninth rocket ship to attempt to voyage across space. From its snout blossomed sudden flame, blue and red and blue again—rocket counter-blasts that were designed to act as brakes. They worked, somewhat. The speed cut from bullet-rate to falling-rate. From falling-rate to flying-rate. Then, of a sudden, partial clarity around it. Within an upper envelope of blinding vapors, Venus had a thinner atmosphere, partially transparent. Below showed a surface of fluffy greens, all sorts of greens—lettuce, apple, olive, emerald, spinach, sea greens. Vegetation, plainly, and lots of it. The ship, steadying in its plunge like a skilled diver, nosed across toward a wet, slate-dark patch that must be open ground. From the stern, where rocket tubes had ceased blazing, broke out a massive expanse of fabric—a parachute. Another and another. Down floated the craft, thudding, at last, upon its resting place.

Planter felt a cramping pain. He realized that to feel pain one must be alive. Then his head throbbed—it hung head downward. Gravity was back. He groped for his hammock fastenings, loosened them, and lowered himself to a standing position beneath, on the round port that had been forward. Disbro hung in his hammock, motionless but moaning faintly.

Planter hurriedly freed him and laid him flat on his back. He fumbled a locker open, brought out a water-pot. A little spurt between Disbro's short, scornful lips brought him back to consciousness.

"We made it," was Disbro's first comment, full of triumph and savagery. "Help me up. Thanks. Whoooh! We seem to have socked in somewhere, nose first."

He was right. No sign of light or open air showed through the forward port, nor the side ports from which Planter had been wont to study the reaches of space. Disbro looked up. The after bulkhead, now their ceiling, had a hatchway. "Hoist me," he said to Planter, who made a stirrup of his hands and obliged. The slightly lesser gravitational pull of Venus made Disbro more active than on Earth. He caught Planter's hammock, got his foot on a side-bracket for steadiness, and climbed up to the hatch. A tug at the clamps opened it, and he wriggled through.

"Wake up, you big buffalo," Planter heard him snarling. Max was evidently unconscious up there. Planter, without a helper to lift him, made shift by climbing Disbro's hammock, then his own, to gain the compartment above.

"He'd have died if he had an ounce of brains," commented Disbro, pointing. Max lay crumpled against the bulkhead, close to the great bank of levers he had been working. In his hands were grasped broken pieces of network from his hammock.

"He was out of the lashings when we landed," Disbro went on. "We were about to hit, and he grabbed hold. Must have passed out. But the big lump's single-minded—abnormally so. He hung on without knowing, and the breaking of those strands kept him from crashing full force."

Planter knelt and pulled Max straight. Max was tremendous, a burly troll in his coveralls. His shoulders were almost a yard wide, his hands like oversize gloves. His big face, with its broad jaw, heavy dark brows and ruddy cheeks, might have been handsome, was not the nose smashed in by a blow taken in some old ring battle.

"Don't waste water," cautioned Disbro as Planter hunted for the food-locker. "I'll bring him out of it." He knelt and slapped the inert face sharply.

Max's mouth opened, showing a gap where his front teeth had been beaten out. He gave a grumbling yell, then sprang erect so suddenly that Disbro, starting away, almost fell through the hatchway. Max saw Planter, scowled and snorted, then fell into a boxing stance. He inched forward, his mighty fists fiddling hypnotically.

"Time!" yelled Planter at once. "This isn't a fight, Max! We've landed—safe and alive—on Venus!"

Max's eyes widened a little. He grinned loosely, and pulled off his helmet. His skull was thatched with bushy, black hair. "Uhh," he said, in a deep, chiding tone. "I forgot. Uhhh."

"Forgot!" echoed Disbro scornfully. "He sounds as if he had the ability to remember."

Planter studied the ports in this compartment. They, too, were obscured by wet-looking grail soil. The ship must be well buried in the crust of Venus. What if it was completely submerged, a tomb for them? He glanced upward to another hatchway, one that would lead past the rocket engines.

"Don't go up," Max cautioned him throatily. "Hot up there."

"Brilliant," was Disbro's ill-humored rejoinder. "Max actually knows that the engines will be hot."

Planter clapped Max on the big shoulder. "It'll be all right," he reassured the giant. "Get me a wrench, will you? That long-shanked one for tightening tube-housings will do."

He scrambled up along the levers, which made a ladder of sorts. The hatch to the engines had to be loosened with the wrench. Beyond, as Max had sagely warned him, it was stiflingly hot. He avoided gleaming, sweltering tubes and housings, scrambling to where a four-foot circle of nuts showed in the bulkheading. This would be the plate that closed the central stern, among the rear rocket-jets. He began to loosen one.

"Stop that, you fool!" It was Disbro, who had climbed after him and was watching. "Who knows about this lower atmosphere of Venus?"

"I'm going to find out about it," replied Planter, a little roughly, for he did not like Disbro's manner. He gave the nut another turn.

"Wait, wait," cautioned Disbro. He climbed all the way into view, holding up a glass flask with a neck attachment of gauges and pipings. "I got a sample, through the lock-panel—plenty of air-bubbles were carried down with us. Let me work it out before you do anything heroic."

Disbro was right. He was usually right, about technologies. Planter mopped his brow on the sleeve of his coverall, and waited.

"Yes," Disbro was commenting. "Oxygen—nice article of that, and plenty. Nitrogen, too. Just like Earth. Quite a bit of carbon dioxide. It'll be from all that vegetation. Certified breathable. Go on and unship that plate."

Planter did so. He loosed the last net, and pushed against the plate. It stirred easily—the after part of the ship would still be in the open. Disbro, climbing after him, caught his elbow.

"I go out first," he announced. "They marked me down as senior of the expedition. One side."

Planter stared quizzically, and once again did as Disbro told him. The lean man thrust up the plate like a trapdoor, and crept out.

"At last!" he yelled back. "Men on Venus! Come on, Planter!"

Planter called back to Max, who was bringing up a bundle of articles Disbro had chosen for the venture outside—two repeating rifles, two pistols, several tools, and tins of food, coils of rope. Planter helped him with the load, and they got outside with it.

Disbro had slid down the step bulge of the hull. He clung to a grab-iron, his feet just above the gray muck into which they had plunged. He stared up.

"First man to set foot on Venus," he was saying. "Who was second of you two?"

"We didn't stop to bother," Planter replied. "What now?"

He stared around, to answer his own question. Venus was dull, like a very cloudy day at home. The air was moist, but fresh, and little wreaths and veils of mist kept one from seeing far. But he made out that they had found lodgment in a sterile-looking clearing with a muddy floor that might or might not sustain a man's weight. All around was a crowded wall of vegetation—towering high above the range of his vision into upper fog, tight grown as a hedge, and vigorously fat of twig and leaf. Planter, no botanist, yet was aware at once of strangeness beyond his power to describe. He knew that specimens should be gathered and preserved to take home.

To take home? Home to Earth? But the ship was almost buried in this mud. He remembered Disbro's dry comment—"Our little gray home in the west." They were on Venus. Undoubtedly to stay.

Max, beside him, gave a sort of gurgling bellow of surprise and fear.

"Uhhh! Something's got Mr. Disbro!"