Hamlin gestured him through an opening in the dura-glass ell of
the house. The room was a library, the same one he'd seen over
Hamlin's shoulder during the phone conversation. In the center of the
book-bordered room was a rectangular table. A man sat at the head of it.
"Sit down," the man said.
Carl sat down. The man at the head of the table was robust, almost to
the point of flabbiness. He was probably in his late twenties, but the
pink flush on his cheekbones and a pair of broad-arched eyebrows gave
him a mannequin appearance.
"This is Mr. Stewart Ferguson," Dr. Hamlin announced.
"Not THE Mr. Stewart Ferguson?"
"I take it then you've heard of him?"
Carl studied the man whimsically. "Yeah, I've heard of him," he said.
"All the way from here to Mars and back I've heard of him."
Stewart Ferguson lit a cigarette. "Am I to understand, Mr. Keating,
that you don't approve of my so-called behavior?"
Carl shrugged. "Who am I to comment on your behavior? If I had your
money I'd probably act the same way you do. Who doesn't want to sleep
with a video actress?"
Dr. Hamlin coughed. "There are times when perhaps the newspapers have
exaggerated Mr. Ferguson's escapades. Furthermore, I hardly think his
private life is any concern of ours."
"I'm not concerned," Carl said. "If I'm being paid five thousand
dollars to listen to an evening's chatter I'd as soon listen to
Ferguson's autobiography as anything else ... might even come down on
my price a bit."
Stewart Ferguson dug into his coat pocket and came up with a sheaf
of bills. He threw them across the table. "That takes care of our
agreement," he said, "now suppose we get down to the business you're
being paid to listen to."
Carl picked up the bills and rapped them across his knuckles. For just
a moment he toyed with the idea of throwing them back in the playboy's
face. He didn't. Not only was five thousand dollars a lot of money, but
his curiosity was aroused. "I'm listening," he said.
Norman Hamlin braced his bony elbows on the table and leaned toward
him. "Mr. Keating, in the course of the three trips you made to Mars
with the military, what was it that stood out foremost in your mind?"
"Men's emotions vary," Carl said carefully. "An architect would
probably admire the beauty of the Martian cities, while a gourmet would
savor the taste of candied encoms. Probably the thing that impressed me
most was the friendliness of the people."
Hamlin drummed his fingers on the table. "I see," he said. "You'd say,
then, it was a reasonably nice place to live?"
"Reasonably nice," Carl agreed. "Certainly nicer than the
science-fiction writers had pictured it."
"Better than Earth?"
Carl shook his head. "Not as far as I'm concerned. My tastes run to
sandy beaches and women with real eyelashes. That's just my personal
opinion you understand. There's almost eighty-thousand people who
disagree with me--I believe that was the latest migration figures."
Hamlin thumped his pipe against the edge of the table. "I understand
you've just returned from Venus, Mr. Keating. Can you give us a short
briefing concerning your reactions to that planet?"
* * * * *
Carl eyed the man warily. "I'll be as brief as possible. There's been
four landings on Venus in almost forty years. All these have been made
by the military. That to me is a pretty substantial indication that no
one would go there unless they were ordered to!"
Hamlin smiled. "I didn't mean quite as brief as that, Mr. Keating. I
had rather hoped you'd be a little more explicit."
Carl frowned. "I find it a bit hard to understand just what you're
driving at Dr. Hamlin. After all, there's been over a hundred books
written on the subject. What can I add to the books? Maybe I could cram
in a few more ghastly adjectives, but even then it wouldn't explain
what the place was really like. You'd have to go there to find that out.
"How can you explain to someone sitting in a comfortable drawing room,
the terrors of plodding through a swamp, knee deep in green fog, and
wondering when a forty foot reptile is going to sink its teeth into
your leg. How can you explain the sheer mental fatigue of waiting for
a needle-nosed scorpion to puncture your space jumper, knowing that
the atmosphere right on the other side of your face-plate can kill you
in thirty seconds. How do you explain an atmosphere of chlorine and
ammonia for that matter--or a color. I say purple-brown to you and it
don't mean a thing. But look at the angry purple-brown landscape of
Venus for two years like I did and you'd know what I mean.
"It's a primitive planet, Dr. Hamlin. Right now, according to the
geologists, Venus is just like the earth was ten million years
ago. Life is forming on it--primitive life. Take the chowls, for
example--you see replicas of them in every department store window.
They look a little like teddy-bears, especially when they walk. Still
they have ten fingers and ten toes. Archeologists tell us they're
humanoid. Yet only half-a-million years ago they crawled out of the
oceans. Maybe in another two million years they'll be living in houses
instead of thatched hovels and pointing guns at people instead of
running like a star-bound flame-buggy every time they hear a noise.
But right now they're scared. They're out of their natural element and
they're scared, the same way our own Neanderthal man was scared before
he found out how to fashion a rock-hammer."
Dr. Hamlin lit his pipe. "You're quite sure then, Mr. Keating, that man
will never be able to live there?"
"Live there! Man can't even breathe there! There's less than one tenth
of one percent oxygen in the air."
Dr. Hamlin pressed his fingertips together. "Mr. Keating," he said,
"just how much do you know about the three men who were lost on the
first Venus expedition?"
"Only what's in the history books," Carl said. "It's more or less of a
legend, how Edgerton, Rhind, and Mitchell, were separated from the main
party and never seen again."
"Died contributing to man's conquest of space," Ferguson said with mock
drama.
"It wasn't a pleasant death," Carl said quickly. "I'd bet on that."
"Mr. Keating," Hamlin said, "do you have any ideas as to just why these
three men should have disappeared at this time?"
Carl shook his head. "Could have been anything, I guess. They could
have got lost and ran out of oxygen. They could have gotten snake bit.
I wouldn't know. The whole thing happened before I was born."