"What's it really like?" Splinter asked impatiently.
Kerry Blane yawned, settled back luxuriously. "I'll tell you later," he said, "I'm going to take a nap and try to ease this bellyache of mine. Wake me up so that I can take over, when we land; Venus is a tricky place to set a ship on."
He yawned again, drifted instantly into sleep, relaxing with the ability of a spaceman who sleeps when and if he can. Splinter smiled down at his sleeping partner, then turned back to the quartzite port. He shook his head a bit, remembering the stories he had heard about the water planet, wondering—wondering—
II
Venus was a fluffy cotton ball hanging motionless in bottomless space. Far to the left, Mercury gleamed like a polished diamond in the sunlight. Kerry Blane cut the driving rockets, let the cruiser sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief flicker of a side jet.
Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face eager and reckless, his eyes seeking to pierce the clouds that roiled and twisted uneasily over the surface of the planet.
Kerry Blane glanced tolerantly at his young companion, felt a nostalgic tug at his heart when he remembered the first time he had approached the water-planet years before. Then, he had been a young and reckless firebrand, his fame already spreading, an unquenchable fire of adventure flaming in his heart.
Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls, brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.
"Val Kenton died there," Splinter whispered softly, "Died to save the lives of three other people!"