"Now we are within twenty million miles of Venus and are about to enter the heavy atmosphere surrounding this planet. This is a sort of cloud bank made up mostly of particles of dust. We have to use the repulsing power on this too because travelling at the speed we are, those particles would really sandblast our ship," explains the scientist. "This cloud is produced mostly by satellites of Venus which are not like the Earth's moon. They have terrific dust storms blowing over them constantly which produce a dust belt around the planet half a million miles in width. It is not a belt in the sense you use this word, meaning a band which girds only a certain portion. We speak of it as a belt because of its thickness, but it entirely envelopes the planet, acting as a protective casing and shielding her from the intense heat of the sun's bombardment, since she is so close to the sun." We are now through the cloud and can see Venus as a planet perfectly. The air from here it seems to be very clear but quite moist. The instruments indicate an appreciable amount of moisture. They also had indicated the presence of much moisture through the entire width of the dust cloud. It seemed to us more like fog than dust. We thought the presence of fog or moisture that far from a planet was quite a distance, but the scientist says it is not, that planets in other solar systems have similar conditions out that far and farther, but planet Venus and planet Mercury are the only ones in our system having such protective shields, but these two are of different consistency. We are nearing Venus and the instruments continue to show the presence of a great deal of moisture. The countryside has a lush green covering, proving there is a lot of water on this planet, while the city we are circling a thousand feet above seems more of a fantasy than a reality. Our Martonian host tells us this is the capital of Venus and the largest city on the planet, but to us it looks more like castles built on clouds. The pilots have been circling to enable us to enjoy this beauty to the utmost. Just as they were preparing to land, rain began falling, a regular downpour, and we received a signal from the ground to delay landing for a short time. Such rains seem to be a regular occurrence for we are told by the scientist that they get these downpours here about three times a day during certain seasons of the year, but they are of very short duration. Now the rain has stopped and we are signalled to land. Many large ships are on the ground here at the airfield, all Venetian with the exception of two: one of these has the insignia of planet Jupiter, while the other has planet Saturn pictured on it.