irectly in the protected circle
of the walls, Burl and Russ dropped a rope ladder and swung down hand
over hand to be the first human beings to set foot on Venus.

They were lightly dressed, for the temperature was hot, around 110 deg., and
it was humid. No breezes blew here. They wore shorts and shirts and
high-laced leather boots. Each carried two small tanks of oxygen on his
back. A leather mouth nozzle strapped across the shoulders guaranteed a
steady flow of breathable air. In their belts were strapped knives and
army pistols. Russ carried recording equipment, and Burl a hatchet.

They dropped off the swaying ladder inside the station. The ground was
hard-packed as if the builders had beaten it down and smoothed it off.
The globes were familiar to Burl--he had studied the pictures of the two
he had already visited and he realized that they followed the same
general system. Where the mast towers would have been, there were leads
running through the plastic walls out across the sea. He wondered
briefly why the walls were curved outward.

As the helicopter moved away, the metal weight on the end of the
dangling ladder brushed the top of the wall. There was a crackling
noise, and a spark jumped between them.

"The wall is electrically charged," said Burl. "I wonder why?"

Russ shook his head. "From the looks of it, to keep off something.
Perhaps some kind of native life. But what? I'm sure there's nothing of
a highly organized physical structure here."

Burl found the controls of the station, but before touching them, he
remembered the alarm on Mercury. "I'd better try to smash the alarm
first," he called out to Russ.

Finally, Burl located an isolated globe perched on a post, which
resembled the one he had briefly glimpsed on Mercury. He ran his hands
over it, feeling a mild vibration within. Then, at its base, he found
the levers. He moved them and the vibration died out. "I think I've
turned it off," he announced. "But stand by with a gun, just in case."

Russ drew his pistol, and Burl switched off the main controls of the
Sun-tap. A globe or two burst; there was a sort of settling down in the
station. Abruptly they felt the heat intensify and knew that the sky was
shining more brilliantly than before. The diversion of the Sun was over
for Venus.

The alarm globe remained quiet, but Burl took his hatchet and smashed
it. Russ was carefully photographing the station, measuring the
distances, and tracing the