"Fine. Now could you also arrange for _me_ to meet this guy at the
space port tonight? I'll be his guide."
"I don't like the way you're acting, Lou. I don't want any trouble."
Flint grinned. "You old goat. You're thinking about your reputation.
When you and Dad were with the first settlers that took Saturn away
from the natives, you didn't worry about trouble then. But I promise--I
won't do anything to hurt your politics."
The Governor shook his head resignedly. "You're just as stubborn as
your father was," he said. He reached in a drawer and handed Flint a
small engraved card. It read:
K. V. Vaun
Fur Fashions, Inc.
New York City, Earth
"Thanks," Flint said. "I'll be there tonight." He strode quickly from
the room.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later the great shadowy sphere that was the Saturn
mainland was shrinking in the distance. Ahead, through the plane's
front view-plate, the Ring arced across the heavens, a pastel rainbow
against the outer night. Night here was never complete blackness; the
Ring's sprinkling of radium moons gave a glow one could read by even at
midnight.
Ten minutes more and he abruptly threw the ship into a shuddering
bank, skirted a looming planetoid, dived to a precarious landing on
its neighbor. He dragged a spare radio set from under his seat and with
it in his hand jumped out of the ship and ran to a large tree on which
one end of a heavy cable was tied.
The other end of the cable stretched up and away from the planetoid
and out across the misty void--to the neighboring globe which was so
heavily jungled that there was no place to land a plane. Flint climbed
into the dangling cable chair, holding the radio in his lap, and pushed
himself out across the wire, away from the planetoid, over the sheer
drop ten miles under his feet.
Seconds later--things happened fast with this feather gravity--the
other world moved up under him and he dropped lightly to its surface.
The trail he took through the woods was more like a tunnel, and the
little clearing that soon appeared was like a well, the moon lights
filtering through.
* * * * *
In the clearing lay the rusted hull of a space-ship, used for a house.
Before it stood a Venusian, skinning a baragator which hung by its
scaley legs from a log tripod. The man's only clothing was a bright
red loin cloth, and the flesh of his limbs, chest, and face was green,
a burnished green like the sheen of sunlight under water. He was not
large, but the smooth suppleness of his body gave an impression of
great strength, like the coils of a python.
As Flint came out of the jungle, the Venusian turned to face him as
though he knew of his approach, although Flint's tread had been silent
as a cat's. His words, before Flint could speak, were also uncanny--as
if he already knew what Flint had come to tell him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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