I couldn't tell him about Talbot Kramer walking out on us. If I told him that, I knew he would climb right back into his sportster and head on to Venus Joe's. Venus Joe's which had started with fifty times the capital Harry and I had had, was doing well enough. But if Spaceman's magazine gave them a plug and said nothing about us, we really were through. I knew it and Harry coming back from the tent platform knew it and we didn't have to say it out loud.
"Yes," I told Mr. Stevenson. "We're the guides too."
"Experienced?"
"We know Venus as well as anyone," I said, which wasn't exactly a lie since no one, not even the Extra-terrestrial geographic Survey, had been able to draw an accurate map of Venus yet.
Mr. Stevenson seemed very doubtful. "Well, boys, I don't know. No hard feelings, you understand. If I was alone it might be different. But my daughter's here. She's not exactly a delicate item now, boys, but she's no big-game hunter, either. If it was a cabin instead of a tent and if you had bearers and trackers—"
"You can have our cabin!" Harry cried desperately.
"Well, I don't know, boys."
I gave Harry one of those desperate stares. Harry returned it to me, saying without words that he had no further ideas either. I could see our last chance—a favorable write-up in Spaceman's magazine—going up in smoke. Mr. Stevenson started back toward his sportster and said,
"I'll say I stopped here on the way to Venus Joe's, boys. I'll say the place looked—ah, primitive. How's that? Primitive, I'll say. For real outdoorsmen."