After the exchange, Alston smashed the visiphone and inter-office communicator.

"The lady is leaving with me," he warned the director. "So use judgment. If anything happens to me, it happens to her. If anyone gets in my way, I'll blast through. Is that clear?"

Hailard nodded. "Clear to me. Maybe not to the guards on the roof."

Alston's face lighted savagely. "You can come along and explain it to them."

Herding his prisoners before him, Alston marched to the elevator-landing. Hailard pressed the stud for the surviving cage. The car stopped, its door slid open. Alston gestured toward the transmitter. "Give them your orders and make it good."

Hailard shrugged.... IIIFive hours and approximately 1,800 airline miles from Quanta City, Alston switched back from rocket power to the atomic motors. Not daring to use radar for navigation or altitude soundings, he was not certain exactly where he was. Climbing swiftly into the murk, he flew blindly by dead reckoning, and most of the journey was accomplished in or above the miles-deep canopy of dust and vapor which eternally shrouds Venus from all view of other worlds.

On the silver, skimming over the limitless expanse of cloud banks, rainbow-tinted with reflected light, the ship had a view of breath-taking extent. They were somewhere over the Tihar Forest, he knew, and within striking distance of his destination. But until he descended below the obscurity of unbroken mist-seas, the exact position was guesswork. Blades flailing in the thin, stratospheric air, the 'copter slanted downward, settling swiftly. It hovered for seconds above a roil surface of blinding brilliance, then churning grayness enveloped them, limiting vision to a few yards radius.

Temptation to use the sounding device was overwhelming, but he knew that hundreds of spotters were tuning detectors eagerly, hoping for just such a lapse, to triangulate his position. With muttered profanity, he restrained the impulse. Sparing a moment from peering anxiously below, he eyed Kial Nasron resentfully.

"You should have 'chuted down when I gave you the chance," he told her morosely. "It was a better risk than this."

"I wanted to come," she replied, with a toss of head. "This is the Tihar Forest, isn't it?"

He grinned. "I think so. We'll know in a few minutes if the ceiling is high enough to give me 

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