stay close to the Orestes. Five of the sailors bailed out, you'll remember. In safety-sleds. We've got to hope one or more of them will reach Venus City, start a rescue party out after us."

"But you said 'get going'?"

"To work, I meant. We're going to need protection from the sun." Again Captain Lane glanced at the sky, this time a little anxiously. "I know this country. After that sun gets up, it will be a bake-oven. A seething cauldron of heat. Damp, muggy heat. Steam from the marshes below, the raw, blinding heat blazing down from the rocks above. This is Venus, Mallory—" He laughed shortly; but there was no mirth in his laughter. "This isn't an air-conditioned home on Earth. Come along!"

Silently, Tim followed him. They picked their way through the tangled wreckage of the Orestes, stopping from time to time to salvage such bits of equipment as Lane felt might be of use. Flashlights, side-arms, vacuteens of clear, cold water, packets of emergency rations. Through chamber after shattered chamber they moved, Captain Lane leading the way. Tim and Dorothy following mutely behind. Everywhere it was the same. Broken walls, bent and twisted girders, great rents in what had once been a sturdy spacecraft.

And finally Lane gave up.

"It's no use," he said. "There's no protection in this battered hulk. Shading ourselves in one of these open cells would be like taking refuge in a broiler."

"Then what can we do, Daddy?"

"There's only one thing to do. Break out bulgers. They're thermostatically controlled. We'll keep cooler in space-suits than anything else. Mallory, you remember where they were?"

"Yes, sir!" Tim went after the space-suits, grateful for a chance to contribute in some way to their common good. The storeroom in which the bulgers had been locked was no longer burglar-proof; one wall had been sheared away in the crash as if cleft with a gigantic ax. He clambered into the compartment, broke out three bulgers, gathered up spare oxytainers for each of them.

He had just finished lugging the equipment out of the storeroom, sweating from the exertion of lifting three heavy space-suits beneath a sun which was now glowing brazenly in an ochre, misted sky, when a sharp cry startled him.

"Daddy! Behind you!" It was Dorothy who screamed the warning. And then, "Tim! Tim!"

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