e Office promptly bought
up full exploratory and mining rights to the planet for a price that was
a brazen steal, and then in high excitement began pouring millions of
dollars into ships and machines bound for the muddy planet. The Board of
Directors met hoots of derision with secret smiles as they rubbed their
hands together softly. Special crews of psychologists were dispatched to
Venus to contact the natives; they returned, exuberant, with
test-results that proved the natives were friendly, intelligent,
co-operative and resourceful, and the Board of Directors rubbed their
hands more eagerly together, and poured more money into the Piper
Venusian Installation.

It took money to make money, they thought. Let the fools laugh. They
wouldn't be laughing long. After all, Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., could
recognize a gold mine when they saw one.

They thought.

* * * * *

Robert Kielland, special investigator and trouble shooter for Piper
Pharmaceuticals, Inc., made an abrupt and intimate acquaintance with
the fabulous Venusian mud when the landing craft brought him down on
that soggy planet. He had transferred from the great bubble-shaped
orbital transport ship to the sleek landing craft an hour before, bored
and impatient with the whole proposition. He had no desire whatever to
go to Venus. He didn't like mud, and he didn't like frontier projects.
There had been nothing in his contract with Piper demanding that he
travel to other planets in pursuit of his duties, and he had balked at
the assignment. He had even balked at the staggering bonus check they
offered him to help him get used to the idea.

It was not until they had convinced him that only his own superior
judgment, his razor-sharp mind and his extraordinarily shrewd powers of
observation and insight could possibly pull Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
out of the mudhole they'd gotten themselves into, that he had
reluctantly agreed to go. He wouldn't like a moment of it, but he'd go.

Things weren't going right on Venus, it seemed.

The trouble was that millions were going in and nothing was coming out.
The early promise of high production figures had faltered, sagged,
dwindled and vanished. Venus was getting to be an expensive project to
have around, and nobody seemed to know just why.

Now the pilot dipped the landing craft in and out of the cloud blanket,
braking the ship, falling closer and closer to the surface as Kielland