watched gloomily from the after port. The lurching billows of clouds
made him queasy; he opened his Piper samples case and popped a pill into
his mouth. Then he gave his nose a squirt or two with his Piper
Rhino-Vac nebulizer, just for good measure. Finally, far below them, the
featureless gray surface skimmed by. A sparse scraggly forest of twisted
gray foliage sprang up at them.

The pilot sighted the landing platform, checked with Control Tower, and
eased up for the final descent. He was a skillful pilot, with many
landings on Venus to his credit. He brought the ship up on its tail and
sat it down on the landing platform for a perfect three-pointer as the
jets rumbled to silence.

Then, abruptly, they sank--landing craft, platform and all.

The pilot buzzed Control Tower frantically as Kielland fought down
panic. Sorry, said Control Tower. Something must have gone wrong. They'd
have them out in a jiffy. Good lord, no, _don't_ blast out again, there
were a thousand natives in the vicinity. Just be patient, everything
would be all right.

They waited. Presently there were thumps and bangs as grapplers clanged
on the surface of the craft. Mud gurgled around them as they were hauled
up and out with the sound of a giant sipping soup. A mud-encrusted
hatchway flew open, and Kielland stepped down on a flimsy-looking
platform below. Four small rodent-like creatures were attached to it by
ropes; they heaved with a will and began paddling through the soupy mud
dragging the platform and Kielland toward a row of low wooden buildings
near some stunted trees.

As the creatures paused to puff and pant, the back half of the platform
kept sinking into the mud. When they finally reached comparatively solid
ground, Kielland was mud up to the hips, and mad enough to blast off
without benefit of landing craft.

He surveyed the Piper Venusian Installation, hardly believing what he
saw. He had heard the glowing descriptions of the Board of Directors. He
had seen the architect's projections of fine modern buildings resting on
water-proof buoys, neat boating channels to the mine sites, fine
orange-painted dredge equipment (including the new Piper Axis-Traction
Dredges that had been developed especially for the operation). It had
sounded, in short, just the way a Piper Installation ought to sound.

But there was nothing here that resembled that. Kielland could see a
group of little wooden shacks that looked as though they were ready