not to dislodge your helmet; the air will make you ill unless you are acclimated to it."

He could see the tiny tremulous smile on her lips, and he held her hand tightly for a moment. Then he spun the cogs of the port-door, felt the slight breeze about his body as the higher compressed air of the ship soughed into the heavy air of Venus.

He helped the girl to the muddy ground, lifted the ati-gun from his belt, paced slowly toward the main hut, his eyes flashing everywhere for the slightest sign of danger, absolutely certain now that things here were even worse than he had conceived them to be.

There was an indefinable threat of danger in the stillness of the great clearing that tightened Don Denton's nerves. Far away, could be heard the dull rumble of the eternal waves on the island's edge, and closer could be heard the soft hissing of the air through the green Lanka fronds.

The clearing had been baked brick-hard with an ati-cannon; now its surface was spotted with soupy puddles of green mud where the every-day rains had seeped into some hollow.

Two freighters squatted near the North edge of the clearing, their dulled sides scabrous with great patches of growing rust, their empty ports like great blank staring eyes watching the two terrestrials slowly approach the main hut.

"Don," Jean pressed close to the trouble shooter's tall body, "where is everybody?"

Don Denton shook his head, a furry spider of apprehension crawling up his spine, his eyes piercing and searching as he held the ati-gun in a tremorless hand. He walked slowly forward, the eeriness of the silver-lighted scene touching his sensibilities.

The dis-gun wailed in Denton's fist.

He fired the moment the slug-like creature came from the hut's door, the wailing hiss of the gun strangely loud. There was a silent scream that crescendoed and titillated in diminishing waves, then the creature collapsed into a protoplasmic mass that quivered horribly for a moment and then was still.

"Don!" Jean said fearfully.

The trouble shooter's face was like chiselled granite, and he stepped to the door of the hut and rayed the stinking mass of bubbly flesh out of existence. He handed the twin ati-gun to the girl, nodded toward the hut's interior.

"Stay here," he snapped, "while I take a 

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