be five or more on Venus—"

"Pah! Luna ... Mars ... Venus ... you're still a groundhog. I'll not see my girl married to a money-grubbing businessman, Mallory."

"Tim's not a businessman," broke in Dorothy Lane. "He's an engineer." And anyone seeing her young fury would have smiled to note how much alike she was to her bucko, space captain father.

"Engineer! Nonsense! Only an astrogation engineer deserves that title. He's a—a—What is it you do? Build ice-boxes?"

"I'm a calorimetrical engineer," Mallory answered stiffly. "My main job is the designing and installation of air-conditioning plants where they are needed. On airless Luna, the cold Martian deserts, here on Venus. The simple truth is—"

"The simple truth is," stated the skipper savagely, "that you're a groundhog and a damned poor son-in-law for a spaceman. You being what you are, and Dorothy being what she is, I say the hell with you, Mr. Mallory! Perhaps I can't prevent your marriage. But there's one thing I can do—and that is wash my hands of the two of you!"

He watched them, searching for signs of indecision in their eyes. He found, instead—and with a sense of sickening dread—only sorrow. Sorrow and pity and regret. And Tim Mallory said quietly, "I'm sorry, sir, that you feel that way about it."

Lane turned to his daughter.

"Dorothy?" he said hoarsely.

"I'm sorry, too." Her voice was gentle but determined. "Tim is right. We—" Then her eyes widened; sudden panic lighted them, and her hand flew to her lips in a gesture of fear. "Something's wrong! Venus! The ship—!"

Captain Lane did not need her warning. His space-trained body had recognized disaster a split-second before. His legs had felt the smooth flooring beneath him lurch and sway. His eyes had glimpsed, through the spaceport, the sudden looming of the silver disc toward which they had been gliding easily but now were plunging at headlong, breakneck speed. His ears howled with the clamor of monstrous winds that clutched with vibrant fingers the falling Orestes.

In a flash he spun and fought his way up a sharply tilting deck to the wall audio, thrust at its button, bawled a query. The mate's voice, shrill with terror, answered:

"The Dixie-rod, sir! It's jammed! We're 

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