"Everybody who reads your stereotyped science fiction knows it, you mean. And after you find out their names, you say, 'Take me to your leader,' and their leader turns out to be a big beautiful blond who is stacked. Well, I think I will be getting back to my ship."
"I don't see anybody stopping you," Gordon said.
She gave him a long look. In the roseate radiance of the Venusian afternoon, her face had a pink-cheeked little girl aspect. "In imperialistic idiom, that means, I suppose, that it is a matter of complete indifference to you what I do."
"It sure does," Gordon said. "Well, I'll be seeing you."
Leaving her standing by the brook, he re-entered the forest and struck out over the little hills that rolled back from the littoral like green inland waves to break riotously against the high ridge that encompassed the island's interior. In his initial enthusiasm, he had wandered farther from his ship than he had meant to, and he had been about to turn back when he had seen the girl. Now he had another reason for returning: a dark cloud was due to arrive over Washington in the very near future, and it was up to him to send out a bad-weather warning.
Multicolored flowers carpeted virtually every square inch of the forest floor; finch-like birds of rainbow hues darted overhead, leaving exquisite wakes of song; squirrel-like mammals spiraled tree trunks so swiftly that they were barely visible. Venus had turned out to be the Venus of the romantics, rather than the Venus of the scientists, and Gordon, who, for all his scientific training, was a romantic himself, found the eventuality exhilarating, even in his present doldrums. Perhaps when man reached Mars, he would find blue canals after all, no matter what the scientists said to the contrary, and fragile glass cities tinkling in cinnamon-scented winds.
The day was nearly done when he reached the cove, near the shore of which his spaceship stood, and darkness was upon him by the time he climbed the metal Jacob's ladder and stepped through the lock. (In blithe disregard of learned opinion, Venus's rotation period approximated Earth's; however, her cloud-cover brought about an abrupt and early departure of daylight.) In his haste, he did not bother to close the lock, but headed straight for the radio alcove and beamed the news of his historic meeting with Major Sonya Mikhailovna across the immensities to Space Force headquarters at New Canaveral, appending it with the information that the peoples of Earth could no longer consider themselves the sole inheritors of the solar system.
Owing to the distance involved, over five minutes elapsed before he received a reply. He was informed that the USSR had already released the news of the new space victory and that the Soviet premier had declared a national holiday in honor of the occasion. New Canaveral also provided him with an unsolicited thumbnail-biography of Major Sonya Mikhailovna. Her father Pëtr, was a famous Russian pianist, she was twenty-three years of age, unmarried, spoke six languages fluently, had a nodding acquaintance with eleven more, held a doctor's degree in anthropology, was an accomplished ballerina, and in the last Olympic games had won the gold medal in the gymnastics competition. She had been chosen for the Venus shot from a group of one hundred trained women volunteers, and the rank of major had been bestowed upon her in honor of her service to her country. Also—
Gordon heard the footsteps then, and whirled around. But the three Venusians who had crowded into the little control room were upon him before he could draw his pistol. They relieved him of it quickly and tossed it to one side; then two of them held him while the third covered his nose and mouth with a wet cloth that reeked of a cloying perfume. He blacked out in a matter of seconds.