THE VENUS EVIL By Chester S. Geier In the sweet Venusian spring, when iridescent butterflies swarmed and deer-things scampered, it was both necessary and good for Richard Farris to kill George Pearce. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] In my mind the memory is still painful and raw, like a wound that has refused to heal. I have only to close my eyes to see Pearce leaping toward me, his face a twisted mask of fear and rage. And I can feel the machine-pistol jerking in my hand as a stream of tungsten-steel pellets stopped his maddened rush, washing away all motion and expression in the utter quiescence of death. Yes, I killed George Pearce, whom the world will remember as one of its greatest chemical scientists and one of the three members of the ill-fated first expedition to Venus. I _had_ to kill him. To explain the circumstances which led to it requires that I start at the beginning. Police authorities have ordered me to make this statement as clear and detailed as possible. Everyone recalls the furor created by the privately sponsored launching of the first rocket to Mars, which beat by several months a government project aimed at the same goal. The government rocket blew up a short distance beyond the Heaviside Layer, but a little over a year and a half later the privately-owned space vessel returned. And a new furor was aroused, not so much by the fact that the expedition had successfully returned as that it brought back a large fortune in gold, platinum, and gems. The explorers as well as their backers were each made financially independent for the rest of their lives. Man's natural cupidity was excited to fever pitch. The planets were no longer regarded as milestones on the road to scientific knowledge, but as store houses brimming with fabulous treasures. More rockets were hastily launched by various groups in different countries, but the attempts were defeated by the very impatience which inspired them. The rockets, too quickly and inefficiently constructed, exploded soon after leaving Earth, or, if they reached outer space at all, were never heard from again. It was this state of affairs that prevailed when Anson Durwent finished the construction of the _Solarian_. A scientific genius made wealthy by various patents, he built the vessel entirely out of his own funds. Nor were his motives those of amassing further wealth, for the conditions which he set were that the _Solarian_ was to conduct a true voyage of exploration, and that any profits arising from the discovery of precious metals or minerals were to be divided equally among everyone involved in the expedition.