"I don't think so. It fits in with rumors I've been hearing at Venusport. The Big Shots are up to something."
"Then here's a word of advice, son." Tom laid a hand on the captain's shoulder as they stopped before his ship. "If that's the way you feel, stop making these fool junkets to New Washington and spend your time finding out what Wildoatia's really up to. If any more trips are absolutely necessary, send Sadie." He smiled crookedly. "Gets sort of lonesome here, now that my ticker won't let me go spacehopping. I'd like to see my girl before I turn up my toes." He shook hands briefly and trudged back toward the cafe, his pudgy shoulders drooping.
Frank climbed into his tiny cabin, dogged the port shut behind him, lashed himself into the anti-shock hammock, shook three Suspenso tablets out of their bottle and signalled for blast-off. Inwardly he fumed because ships could not carry enough air, water and food to allow their crews to remain conscious during a month-long trip. If any strange vessel showed up, he wanted to see it. Finally he broke one of the big pills in two and dropped half of it back into the bottle before gagging over the rest of the bitter dose.
The drug took effect more slowly than usual. Dimly, he felt the pain of the grinding acceleration as the rockets blazed. Before he drifted into suspended animation he saw the silvery Dome plummeting away from him until it assumed perspective in the center of Copernicus Crater.
"Defenseless," he mumbled as his mind clouded. "Moon Station absolutely defense...."
"... less," he gasped, regaining consciousness with a spine-shattering start and with the conviction that someone had played a dirty trick on him while he slept. That was always Suspenso's after-effect, along with a ravening hunger and thirst. Sage reached for the canned tomatoes which spacemen favor in getting their starving, dehydrated bodies back to normal. Then he recalled the comb-shaped vessel and squinted blearily through the blister above his hammock. The black sky was empty of everything except gigantic sun, unwinking stars and the blank and shining disc of Venus.
"Guess they ... don't bother with ... small fry," he croaked, opening the can. After finishing its contents he loosened the hammock straps, dragged himself to the control board and cut the atomic drive. The pile could not be damped, and the fantastically high temperatures at which it operated safely in open space would vaporize the ship as soon as it struck atmosphere. Like it or not, he would have to jockey to a landing by means of a reserve tank of feeble hydrogen peroxide fuel.
Twelve hours later, after circling Venus three times to cut down his speed, Frank knifed into the planet's opaque cloud blanket and settled, with hardly a jar, on the Venusport field. As he clambered to the soggy ground he caught sight of Sadie Thompson racing through the mists to be the first to greet him.