Everybody was Joe. It was one beautiful, happy, joyous round of stinking, hot jungle. And I wasn't getting any nearer my man. Nor had I any idea how I was supposed to find him. I began to feel pretty low about the whole affair.
Joe, on the other hand, enjoyed every moment of the trip. In each village he greeted the natives cheerfully, told them stories, swapped gossip and jokes. And when it was time to leave, he would say goodbye to all his friends and we would plunge into the twisted foliage again.
His spirits were always high and he never failed to say the right thing that would give a momentary lift to my own depressed state of mind. He would talk for hours on end as we hacked our way through the jungle.
"I like Venus," he said once. "I would never leave it."
"Have you ever been to Earth?" I asked.
"No," Joe replied. "I like Terrans too, you understand. They are good for Venus. And they are fun."
"Fun?" I asked, thinking of a particular species of Terran: species Leonard Walsh.
"Yes, yes," he said wholeheartedly. "They joke and they laugh and ... well, you know."
"I suppose so," I admitted.
Joe smiled secretly, and we pushed on. I began to find, more and more, that I had started to talk freely to Joe. In the beginning he had been just my guide. There had been the strained relationship of employer and employee. But as the days lengthened into weeks, the formal atmosphere began to crumble. I found myself telling him all about Earth, about the people there, about my decision to attend the Academy, the rigid tests, the grind, even the Moon run. Joe was a good listener, nodding sympathetically, finding experiences in his own life to parallel my own.