Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/18

Rh rapid it had not been possible to determine.

That black ball ever grew in magnitude, at length, when we were something like a half million miles distant, completely hiding from sight the disk of the great sun-twice the size of that sun which Terrestrials see.

A beautiful phenomenon now. presented itself; the atmosphere was seen encircling the planet like a ring of luminescent silver. And beyond this effulgence, out in all directions, swept the coronal rays and streamers.

The planet, which had been black, or rather, the darkest of purples, slowly, as its disk encroached on the coronal radiance, turned to an ashen grey. But it was not all grey, for there, a thing of mystic beauty, was that "phosphorescence" which is visible even from the earth-explained by some observers as intense auroras (which it is) and by Lowell as the reflection of starshine from vast ice-sheets.

In all my memory there is not a single hour analogous to any of those that succeeded. I have spoken of wild things imagined, for that we were drawing to the end of our journey; but I greatly fear (and I confess it is not without shame) that now my confounded imagination went completely mad in limning, on the canvas of my brain, the things that might be waiting.

At length Henry Quainfan exclaimed cheerily:

"Only a quarter of a million miles farther!"

Venus now presented a disk as large as a dozen moons.

The increase in magnitude was extraordinary, and it took place with ever. accelerated rapidity; in two hours' time -we then were distant about one hundred and fifty thousand miles-the area covered by the planet was equal to that of fifty moons.

In a half hour or so, we had entered Venus' gravitational domain-the region in which her gravity is dominant over the sun's.

"There's not the slightest sensible increase in weight, though," I remarked when Henry told me this. "That will come later-or, rather, it will be something else." "What do you mean?"

"I mean-"

But he was studying the Venusian world again.

"I can see dark things," he said. "Shadowy, indefinite, however. Whether continents, or what, I can't make out."

I had been wondering about something -and waiting for Henry to mention it.

That he had not done so was, however, not surprising. So I asked:

"Are we going to land on this night side?"

"The business is apt to be dark enough," interposed St. Cloud, "without landing in darkness."

"No," Henry returned. "What we are going to do is this: hold straight on until very near-say, ten thousand or eight thousand miles-then swing out of the planet's shadow and over to the sunlit hemisphere."

"Before or behind?" queried St. Cloud.

"Behind," said Henry.

"Why not in the zone of morning?"

I think," said Henry, "that by the welcome."

"I wonder!" Morgan said.

When the distance mentioned was attained, the planet presented that same aspect of mystery and darkness-save for the darting, flickering and swaying of the auroras, a phenomenon of extraordinary beauty. But we had other things to think about. last," observed Henry. "But-now for

"Venus guards her mysteries to the the world of sunlight! We ought to see something there."

"I wonder what," said St. Cloud.

"You'll soon see," Henry told him.

And we did.

The Hornet-her velocity greatly out diminished-swung out into the sun light, as she went round drawing in slowly towards the planet.

And now comes a curious thing. It had been bothering me for some time. At first I had thought nothing of it. Then it had increased until I could dismiss it from my mind only by an effort. Now even that was impossible, and I held silence no longer.

"I don't know what it is," I said, "but there's something queer coming over me a feeling of extreme weakness."

"Where do you feel weak, Rider?" Henry wanted to know.

"All over, it seems."?

"That's funny."

"But especially in the knees," I added, "and accompanied by dizziness."

"That's the first time I ever heard of a fellow getting dizzy in the knees!"

"If you had it," I exclaimed, "you wouldn't stand there grinning about it!"

"I've got it."

"What on earth-?"

I stared at him. He was keeping a sharp lookout, however, and did not answer for some moments.

"Your knees are all right, Rider. It's Venus that's doing it. he's restoring your weight, you know."

"Blockhead!" I exclaimed at myself. "Of course!"

"We're only four thousand miles from her surface," he said, "and so just think of it!-you weigh about thirty-five pounds! For two weeks your weight has been virtually nil, so can you blame your knees for feeling dizzy?"

"Great Jupiter Ammon," I exclaimed, "what will it be like when we stand on Venusian soil? Why, I won't be able to stand; I'll have to sit."

"Ditto," said St. Cloud.

"It will pass away quickly," Henry smiled.

A moment afterwards he drew back from the window, a hand over his eyes.

"We can't stand that," he said. "Lord, what an albedo!

"Those dark glasses, Morgan," he added.

St. Cloud was already fetching them.

"What do you make of it?" I asked after a short pause.

"Not much-yet," he returned. "Wait till we get over farther."

St. Cloud and I waited in silence.

"There is a vast expanse of sunlit world now," Henry said at-length, "but the glare of the atmosphere-by the goddess Urania, it's no wonder that Venus has always been a mystery to astronomers."

"Cloud-wrapped?" queried St. Cloud, bending over to look, and almost instantly drawing back, blinking and half blinded.

"Protect your eyes," Henry told him. "They can't stand that."

"No," reverting to St. Cloud's query, "she is not cloud-wrapped-that is, in the sense that her surface is completely hidden from view. There are many- countless openings. I can see land, great reaches of it, and water too. But that confounded glare-whence comes its intensity? But-"

"Yes?" said St. Cloud.

"The thing to do is to find the place and land!" "March on, Macduff!" said Morgan.

As regards the high albedo of Venus, by the way, it can, in a large measure, be explained by the hygrometric state of her atmosphere; but it is a certainty that this will not account for it all.

Though a great mass of water vapor is held in suspension, yet Venus is by no means, as most observers believe, encased in an unbroken shell of cloud-a condition that would have to exist to produce (by means of water vapor) her (Continued on page 84)