stared terrified and Rhool laughed with coarse ribald amusement, appeased that I was being beaten.

And then Leh shoved me from the turret, dragged me down the corridor, slammed me into my sleeping cubby. Again his mouth was to my ear.

"Later tonight, I will try and turn you loose. And your friend Allen, and my sister."

In a swift whisper he told me his plans. At the ship's lower exit porte he had hidden a small anti-gravity platform, and three pressure suits. We could escape from there. He shoved the door upon me, barred it and was gone.

I sat tense in the darkness, those last hours. Through the bullseye window the Venus clouds were an opalescent haze of weird glowing luminosity, like phosphorescence in tropic water. It seemed inherent to the cloud-vapours; but more than that I could see that it was radiating up from below. Venus-shine. Pale and weirdly beautiful light inherent to the planet herself.

And then our little ship sank below the clouds, and the surface of Venus lay spread some ten thousand feet below me. It was an amazing world of lush shining forests and gleaming, rippling opalescent water. We were near the country of the Arones; but for just a moment, beyond the shining sea, tiers of black metal mountains were visible which I knew to be the country of the Gorts.

The rasp of my door softly opening made me turn. The grotesque hunched form of Nereid's brother stood there, with a hand in a silencing gesture to his mouth.

"Most of them are in the forward control turret. You go down into the hull to the exit porte. My sister and Allen will join you."

He shoved me. Then he softly closed my door, barred it, and shambled forward toward the turret, grinning, mumbling an inane little tune. I ducked into a doorway; went down an incline ladder. The hull corridor was dark, with just a small hooded light of green glow. Tense, alert, I came to the pressure porte doorway. And suddenly a figure stirred in the shadows.

"Kent!" It was Nereid, crouching here, waiting for me. I gripped her.

"Where's Jack?"

"My brother said he would send him down. But he has not come."

Then we heard faint footsteps on the incline. And suddenly from up there in the dimness, came Allen's voice:

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