Mars was reached and colonization began. And men set up a settlement on Venus. The Holcomb Foundation was convinced that they had the answer to the critical food shortage on Earth. Weather-plant. The one useful thing that stinking Venus produces. Weather-plant is a moss-like plant that will grow almost anywhere. The Foundation botanists found that it gathered nitrogen and water in some inexplicable way, and they became interested in its possibilities. Something had to be done about soil reclamation back on Earth, or starvation would strangle the race. Weather-plant looked like the answer. What the smart boys couldn't have guessed was that in addition to its other strange properties, weather-plant was intelligent--sentient, at least. And they didn't know that it liked its wet, foggy environment very, very much. * * * * * I hit Foy City with a mammoth thirst and very little spending money. A bad combination. I had a Pilot's rating and a brand-new Second Officer's ticket, and I needed a job. I'd been handling a regular chemical flight out of Foy to Montevideo for a one horse concern that was still trying to make the low grade uranium ore found on the Moon pay off. When I came down onto the great pumice plain of Mare Imbrium that served Foy as a spaceport, the patched-up blow-torch I was jockeying blew a venturi and buried herself under twenty feet of pumice. If it had happened on Earth, we'd have been cooked, but Luna's one-sixth gravity saved our hides. Those were the days before tractor-pressor beam landings, you see. Back then you landed a can by balancing her on her tail-flare like a ball on a water spout. And that was a rough go anyway you want to look at it. Anyway, after the pileup I quit. There was some difference of opinion on that particular point between the company and me. They claimed I was fired. Quit or fired, however, I didn't get paid, and that led me to seek solace in the local pubs. That, in turn, led me to the city drunk-tank for the night, and that's where I ran into Bat Kendo.... Bat was Chief Tubeman on the R. S. _Eagle_. He was also a mutation. Not that he wasn't human or anything like that. And he certainly wasn't the much kicked around "homo superior." He merely had an extra sense. We all have it dormant. Bat had it well developed. That's why he was called Bat. People thought he could see in the dark. It wasn't that. Try closing your eyes and moving your head slowly toward an obstruction. If you are very careful and very alert, you'll be able to sense the obstruction before you touch it. Well, Bat could "see" things that way ... perfectly. He even used to pick up beer money by getting into the ring blindfolded and letting pugs throw punches at him. They hit him, but not often. And when they did connect it wasn't because he didn't sense the blows coming; it was because he was slow on his feet and generally three quarters drunk.