“I have already arranged a trust that will give you ample protection,” he replied in a manner that precluded further argument. I saw that he was a young man who brooked no obstacles; in fact I think he never admitted the existence of an obstacle. “As for your remuneration,” he continued, “you may name your own figure.” I waved a deprecatory hand. “It will be a pleasure,” I assured him. “It may take a great deal of your time,” interjected Ralph, “and your time is valuable.” “Precisely,” agreed Napier. “Mr. Rothmund and I will, with your permission, arrange the financial details later.” “That suits me perfectly,” I said, for I detest business and everything connected with it. “Now, to get back to the more important and far more interesting phases of our discussion; what is your reaction to the plan as a whole?” “Mars is a long way from earth,” I suggested; “Venus is nine or ten million miles closer, and a million miles are a million miles.” “Yes, and I would prefer going to Venus,” he replied. “Enveloped in clouds, its surface forever invisible to man, it presents a mystery that intrigues the imagination; but recent astronomical research suggests conditions there inimical to the support of any such life as we know on earth. It has been thought by some that, held in the grip of the Sun since the era of her pristine fluidity, she always presents the same face to him, as does the Moon to earth. If such is the case, the extreme heat of one hemisphere and the extreme cold of the other would preclude life. “Even if the suggestion of Sir James Jeans is borne out by fact, each of her days and nights is several times as long as ours on earth, these long nights having a temperature of thirteen degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and the long days a correspondingly high temperature.” “Yet even so, life might have adapted itself to such conditions,” I contended; “man exists in equatorial heat and arctic cold.” “But not without oxygen,” said Napier. “St. John has estimated that the amount of oxygen above the cloud envelope that surrounds Venus is less than one tenth of one per cent of the terrestrial amount. After all, we have to bow to the superior judgment of such men as Sir James Jeans, who says, ‘The evidence, for what it is worth, goes to suggest that Venus, the only planet in the solar system outside Mars and the earth on which life could possibly exist, possesses no vegetation and no oxygen for higher forms of life to breathe,’ which definitely limits my planetary exploration to Mars.”