Lonny swatted at Baron Munchy with his open palm, but the blow never landed. Out of the mists, coming soddenly from somewhere across the squirming quagmire, came the sounds of a human being crying in desperation. "Help! Help!" sounded the voice, and the thing that so startled Lonny Higgens was that the words were unmistakably feminine. "Good Lord!" he exploded. "Do you suppose Raeburn really has got Lana in his mud-submarine! Damn it, Baron Munchy, why didn't you say so before you spoke?" II Contrary to the general belief earlier than 2070, when the explorer Ramundsen first dipped down through the screening vapors of Uranus, the temperature never approached the freezing point, and lurked instead nearer to the boiling mark of water. The boiling point on Uranus varied greatly, however, due to unbelievable fluctuations of the atmospheric pressure. Lonny made poor time, slogging along on the mud-shoes fashioned with tough vines over a framework of metal. There was a limit to the speed you could make on such contraptions. Baron Munchy, bordering on a nervous frenzy at the promise of activity, had darted ahead, his filmy wings dissolving quickly in the swirling mist. He had a good general idea as to the whereabouts of Raeburn's mud-submarine. Likewise, he had a fairly good estimate of the mud-fisher's capabilities and did not think that Lana Hilton would suffer much if Raeburn had not gone completely wacky. At times the going was pretty good, where the mud was entwined with thick layers of lightning-kelp--so called because tiny sparkles of static electricity darted from it at each step of his clogged mud-shoes. Mud, mud, mud! All Uranus was one vast ball of squirming mud! Thirty-two thousand miles through of squashy mud. Stuff that would run through his fingers, and through the webs of his shoes, and which would suck greedily at his body if he so much as lost his footing. Mud that would never solidify due to the varying turmoil of barometric pressure. Mud that could never dry completely due to the quasi-soluble consistency of Uranusian silt. Two years he'd been here now, fishing for the precious mollusks whose pearls might win him the security and prosperity he had never been able to wrest from the over-populated earth. Two years it had been--or nine days as time was reckoned on Uranus. Nine times he had gone around the muddy world, keeping up with daylight--such as it was--and now--blast it--the world was getting him--absorbing him mentally as well as physically--or so it seemed. Only four days before (Uranusian, a bit less than a year) the feminine aridity of the planet had been shattered by the coming of that headstrong, unreasoning female, Lana Hilton. Prior to that, there had been company of a sort on Uranus--Link Raeburn's mud-submarine had often drifted near enough for an occasional chat.