s seat dropped down, and Alan found himself
stretched out, swinging gently back and forth in the protecting hammock.
The voice from the control tower droned out the remaining seconds.
Tensely Alan waited for the sharp blow of acceleration.

Then the roaring came, and the ship jolted from side to side, struggled
with gravity for a moment, and then sprang up free from the Earth.

Some time later came the sudden thunderous silence as the jets cut out;
there was the dizzying moment of free fall, followed by the sound of the
lateral jets imparting longitudinal spin to the small ship. Artificial
gravity took over. It had been a perfect takeoff. Now there was nothing
to do but wait for Venus to draw near.

The days trickled past. Alan experienced alternating moods of gloom and
exultation. In the gloomy moods he told himself that this trip to Venus
was a fool's errand, that it would be just another dead end, that Cavour
had been a paranoid madman and the hyperspace drive was an idiot's
dream.

But in the moments of joy he pictured the finding of Cavour's ship, the
building of a fleet of hyperdrive vessels. The distant stars within
almost instantaneous reach! He would tour the galaxies as he had two
years ago toured Earth. Canopus and Deneb, Rigel and Procyon, he would
visit them all. From star to bright star, from one end of the universe
to the other.

The shining oval of Venus grew brighter and brighter. The cloud layer
that enveloped Earth's sister planet swirled and twisted.

Venus was virtually an unknown world. Earth colonies had been
established on Mars and on Pluto, but Venus, with her harsh
formaldehyde atmosphere, had been ignored. Uninhabited, uninhabitable,
the planet was unsuitable for colonization.

The ship swung down into the cloud layer; floating wisps of gray vapor
streamed past the orbiting _Cavour_. Finally Alan broke through,
navigating now on manual, following as best he could Cavour's old
computations. He guided the craft into a wide-ranging spiral orbit three
thousand feet above the surface of Venus, and adjusted his viewscreens
for fine pickup.

He was orbiting over a vast dust-blown plain. The sky was a fantastic
color, mottled blues and greens and an all-pervading pink, and the air
was dull gray. No sun at all penetrated the heavy shroud of vapor that
hung round the planet.

For five hours he scouted the plain, hoping to find some sign of
Cavour's habitation. It was hopeless, he told himself