re layers of Venus, the effect of air
on the sun's rays gave them natural sunlight and blue skies again for
the first time in over six weeks. Something about the effect of yellow
sunlight slanting in the portholes raised the spirits of all of them,
and men were whistling as they went about their work. Gerry brought the
ship to a halt a few thousand feet above the endless, tumbled mass of
clouds that eternally covered all of Venus. They were now near enough to
be fully caught in the rotation of the planet's stratosphere, so that
they had normal night and day instead of the eternal midnight that had
gripped them for weeks.

Early the next morning, with all hands on duty, the _Viking's_
helicopters began to drop her down into the cloud-mass. The cottony
billows swept up to meet them--and then they were submerged in a dense
and yellowish fog. Moisture gathered thickly on the windows of the
control room.

"This reminds me of a good London fog!" said Angus McTavish, who had
come up from his engine rooms for a few minutes. "I wonder if they have
any good pubs down there!"

The soupy, saffron-colored fog enshrouded the _Viking_ as she dropped
lower and lower. Gerry Norton checked the altitude personally, watching
the slowly moving hand of the indicator. Twice he held her motionless
while he sent echo-soundings down to make sure they were not too close
to land. Then they went a little lower--and suddenly came clear of the
cloud mass. They were sinking slowly downward through a peculiarly
murky, golden light that was the normal day-time condition on the planet
of Venus. They had arrived!

Below them stretched the rippling waters of a vast and greenish sea. It
was broken by scattered islands, bare bits of rock that were dotted with
a blue moss and were utterly bare of life except for a few swooping
sea-birds. On a distant shore were lofty mountains whose peaks were
capped with snow. In one or two places a narrow shaft of sunlight struck
down through a brief gap in the canopy of eternal clouds, but otherwise
there was only that subdued and peculiarly golden light. Nothing moved
but those few oddly shaped birds.

"Lord--but it's lonely!" Gerry muttered.

There was no sign of human existence, no trace of the towers and
buildings of mankind. Not even any sign of life at all, except for those
sea-birds. It was like a scene from the long-ago youth of the world,
when the only life was that of the teeming shallows or the muddy shor