Steve studied the controls carefully.
He learned where the fuel was stored, and where were kept food and water supplies. He was shown—and memorized—the location of the air-conditioning system through whose viaducts re-freshened, re-oxygenated atmosphere was pumped to each nook and cranny of the ship. And though the armaments of the vessel were a military secret that might not be entrusted to even a traveling dignitary, he learned the locations of the principle ray-guns, and knew the points on a Venusian man-o'-war over which one must achieve mastery in order to seize that vessel.
Thus, though others may have been bored by the trip, to Steve Duane the ten days whisked by like dry leaves fleeing before an autumn gale. And finally the journey came to an end.
On the morning of the eleventh day, when he awakened to peer through his porthole, he discovered the now-familiar spangled firmament was blotted out by a mist of writhing gray. Fog banks, impenetrably thick, engulfed the craft like a veil. The clear, sharp brilliance of open ether was left behind, and the Oalumuo was settling through miles of turgid white to its destination.
And when the gray evaporated, Steve looked down upon the landscape of Earth's humid, solar sister ... the planet Daan.
CHAPTER XIV