Val Kenton sent the ship lower, his fingers playing over the studs like a master pianist playing a piano. He handled the ship with the instinctive ability that had made him famous as a patrolman.
Moments flowed one into the other, and the clouds seemed to press against the quartzite ports with a visible strength. Then the ship was through the clouds, and a thousand feet below the majestic ocean tossed and tumbled in a silent display of strength and ruthlessness that was spine-tingling to see.
Val Kenton's breath exploded with a tiny sigh of relief.
He felt again that sense of silent awe at the unreality of the scene below. For contrary to general belief, there was light on the surface of Venus. Because of the miles-deep thicknesses of clouds, scientists had long stated that there could be no illumination on the water-planet's surface.
On his first trip to Venus, Val Kenton had dispelled that conjecture; he had discovered that the sea was alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm. These worms glowed with the will o' the wisp paleness of a firefly, and the light generated by the billions of worms was reflected back from the low clouds with a pale brilliance that was startling.
Val Kenton remembered his first sight of the glowing ocean, felt again the thrill that had first touched his heart. He swung the space cruiser toward the north pole, peered tensely from the port. Beneath him, the milky ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light, gleaming with a phosphorescent sheen, its turbulence a shifting kalaedoscope of shattered, intermingled colors glowing with every tint of the spectrum.
Val Kenton gasped suddenly; for, exploding from the water in a spray that resembled fire, a scaly blunt something suddenly appeared. For one second, its three hundred foot body was black against the water, and then, majestically, it slid from sight into the depths again.
Val Kenton whistled soundlessly, tensed with sudden horror, realizing how horrible an antagonist the creature could make against the puny frailty of a human.
He sent the ship hurtling northward, ever, ever faster, eyes seeking for one of the few islands that dotted the boundless ocean. For more than an hour, he sped, a thousand feet in the air, feeling fatigue clutching at him, his eyes growing strained and tired.
In the second hour of flight, he sighted the first island. He circled it warily, eagerly looking for the expedition's ship, feeling futility beating at him when he found nothing in the green, luxuriant jungle growth to show that humans had ever landed there.