Carl frowned. "I find it a bit hard to understand just what you're driving at Dr. Hamlin. After all, there's been over a hundred books written on the subject. What can I add to the books? Maybe I could cram in a few more ghastly adjectives, but even then it wouldn't explain what the place was really like. You'd have to go there to find that out.
"How can you explain to someone sitting in a comfortable drawing room, the terrors of plodding through a swamp, knee deep in green fog, and wondering when a forty foot reptile is going to sink its teeth into your leg. How can you explain the sheer mental fatigue of waiting for a needle-nosed scorpion to puncture your space jumper, knowing that the atmosphere right on the other side of your face-plate can kill you in thirty seconds. How do you explain an atmosphere of chlorine and ammonia for that matter—or a color. I say purple-brown to you and it don't mean a thing. But look at the angry purple-brown landscape of Venus for two years like I did and you'd know what I mean.
"It's a primitive planet, Dr. Hamlin. Right now, according to the geologists, Venus is just like the earth was ten million years ago. Life is forming on it—primitive life. Take the chowls, for example—you see replicas of them in every department store window. They look a little like teddy-bears, especially when they walk. Still they have ten fingers and ten toes. Archeologists tell us they're humanoid. Yet only half-a-million years ago they crawled out of the oceans. Maybe in another two million years they'll be living in houses instead of thatched hovels and pointing guns at people instead of running like a star-bound flame-buggy every time they hear a noise. But right now they're scared. They're out of their natural element and they're scared, the same way our own Neanderthal man was scared before he found out how to fashion a rock-hammer."
Dr. Hamlin lit his pipe. "You're quite sure then, Mr. Keating, that man will never be able to live there?"
"Live there! Man can't even breathe there! There's less than one tenth of one percent oxygen in the air."
Dr. Hamlin pressed his fingertips together. "Mr. Keating," he said, "just how much do you know about the three men who were lost on the first Venus expedition?"
"Only what's in the history books," Carl said. "It's more or less of a legend, how Edgerton, Rhind, and Mitchell, were separated from the main party and never seen again."
"Died contributing to man's conquest of space," Ferguson said with mock drama.
"It wasn't a pleasant death," Carl said quickly. "I'd bet on that."
"Mr. Keating," Hamlin said, "do you have any ideas as to just why these three men should have disappeared at this time?"