II
Venus was no longer a green planet; it loomed ahead like some woolly ball spinning in space. The Comet circled it warily, Don Denton's fingers resting lightly on the control studs of the instrument panel, his lips pursed a bit as he drove the ship closer to the clouds.
"It will probably be several hours before we land," he explained to the wide-eyed Jean at his side, "Trying to find the Lanka camp in that soup down there is quite a job in itself, even after I get the Comet through fifteen miles of cloud banks."
Jean was a trifle pale, but there was a spark of confidence in her eyes. "I think," she said quietly, "I feel like you must have felt the first time you landed here."
Don Denton smiled. "There's no feeling like it," he admitted. "I felt it first on the Earth's Moon, and I knew then that I'd never be able to settle down into some routine job. I suppose I'll end my life still feeling that thrill, still seeking out hidden places in the universe."
He pressed a firing stud, and the Comet flashed down toward Venus. For the first time, there was a sense of movement, as the spinning clouds rushed to meet the ship. Always before, with nothing relative to compare their speed with, and because the inertia-field sent all molecules of ship and contents ahead at the same rate of speed, there had been the sensation of staying at rest in the blackness of space. Now, there was something breathtaking in the way that the ship seemed to be dropping.
Then the first tendrils of cloud whipped lazily about the Comet. There was the thrum of the rockets rising to a higher crescendo, and the force screen's voltemeter leaped higher to combat the friction of the tenuous air. Another second, and the great cottony batts of cloud pressed with invisible force against the ship.
And then there was only a grey darkness outside, all light from the sun nullified by the thicknesses of clouds.
Don Denton drifted the ship lower, his fingers flying over the control studs, handling the ship's weight as a horseman controls his mount by a light touch of the reins.
There seemed to be no mental passage of time while the ship was sinking. Moments flowed into each other, and always the clouds seemed to be pressing with a tenuous strength at the quartzite ports.