"They could not do so," replied Warren, "any more than we in this ship could learn the actual mechanism of the motor driving us."
"What? We can't—but why?"
"Because the hypatomic motors which drive us are encased in a steel jacket equipped with a device so regulated that were any attempt made to open it and study its mechanism it would instantly explode, blowing itself and us into oblivion."
And Warren added softly, "I think you begin to understand now, my friends, why every other world fears and distrusts Earth. And why our task of pleading for their cooperation is harder than Gary expected."
CHAPTER VI
"Introducing Larkspur O'Day...."
In exactly three days, one hour and forty-five minutes Solar Constant time, the Liberty dropped to a perfect landing in a cradle on the rocketdrome of Sun City, seat of the Venusian planetary government.
As Warren had foretold, their arrival was unchallenged by any ship of the SSP fleet. Sole occupants of the rocketdrome's cradles were lumbering freighters and sleek merchantmen emblazoned with the emblem of Earth's merchant marine.
But if their arrival was unchallenged it was not unexpected. A host of ebony-skinned Venusians gathered about their ship instantly. As soon as their party emerged from the lock, a delegation moved forward to greet them. With but a few words of preamble they were whisked away to the Venusian Council Hall. There, serving as spokesman for the group, Gary Lane launched earnestly upon an explanation of the mission which had brought them hither.
It was a strikingly different group of beings whom Gary now spoke to than those to whom he had addressed his plea on Earth three short days ago. The Venusians were human. Upon his conquest of space, man had discovered—somewhat to his surprise and more than a little to the chagrin of the ethnologists who had predicted otherwise—that nowhere (in the solar galaxy at least) had risen to planetary supremacy any race of creatures other than that represented by Homo sapiens.