from the freighter. He had a vague premonition that the even tenor of his life was destined to be rudely shattered by an indefinable something that he could not fight with the strength of his rangy body nor the solidness of his fists.

The Comet sped in a long parabola from the side of the freighter, a long skid-mark of flaming rocket gas in the darkness behind, and headed obliquely toward Venus which gleamed greenly far ahead.

Don Denton pressed the last of a series of studs on the control panel, cut in the robot-pilot, then grinned admiringly at Jean Palmer.

"Sorry I was rude back there," he apologized.

The girl's answering smile was like a ray of light in the cabin. She stretched lazily in the padded seat, brushed a vagrant lock of hair from her eyes.

"I guess it was my fault," she admitted. "I never stopped to think that you might not like the job of playing space taxi with me. But," her eyes were suddenly serious, "I simply have to see if anything is wrong with my father."

Don Denton grinned. "There's nothing to be afraid of on Venus," he said confidently. "I've been there half a dozen times, and all I've found was a water world, with very little land. About the only life on the planet is of a fish type, which lives deep in the oceans."

"That's what my father told me."

"Well, he was exactly right; it's about the deadest world I've seen. There are nine patches of land, probably mountain tops, and each of them are covered with Lanka plants. I suppose you know that that is what your father is doing there—that is, he's cutting and rendering the plants for their oil?"

Jean nodded. "Yes, he told me. But after all—"

She screamed suddenly, clutched wildly at the arms of her seat. And the motion sent her flying into the air, where she struggled for a balance that wasn't there.

"Easy," Don Denton said, reached out, drew her back to her seat. "It's that blasted gravity rotor again!"

He went sideways from his seat, catching a flashlight from a wall-clip as he did so, then pulled himself by the wall hand rail toward the rear of the cabin.

"I'm going to be ill," Jean said weakly.

"Chin up," Don Denton said sharply. "I'll 

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