Before the first ship from Earth made a landing on Venus,there was much speculation about what might be foundbeneath the cloud layers obscuring that planet's surfacefrom the eyes of all observers.
One school of thought maintained that the surface of Venuswas a jungle, rank with hot-house moisture, crawling withwrithing fauna and man-eating flowers. Another group contendedhotly that Venus was an arid desert of wind-carvedsandstone, dry and cruel, whipping dust into clouds that sunlightcould never penetrate. Others prognosticated an oceanplanet with little or no solid ground at all, populated by enormousserpents waiting to greet the first Earthlings with jawsagape.
But nobody knew, of course. Venus was the planet ofmystery.
When the first Earth ship finally landed there, all they foundwas a great quantity of mud.
There was enough mud on Venus to go all the way aroundtwice, with some left over. It was warm, wet, soggy mud—clingingand tenacious. In some places it was gray, and inother places it was black. Elsewhere it was found to be varyingshades of brown, yellow, green, blue and purple. But just thesame, it was still mud. The sparse Venusian vegetation grewup out of it; the small Venusian natives lived down in it; thesteam rose from it and the rain fell on it, and that, it seemed,was that. The planet of mystery was no longer mysterious. Itwas just messy. People didn't talk about it any more.
But technologists of the Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., R&Dsquad found a certain charm in the Venusian mud.
They began sending cautious and very secret reports backto the Home Office when they discovered just what, exactlywas growing in that Venusian mud besides Venusian natives.The Home Office promptly bought up full exploratory andmining rights to the planet for a price that was a brazen steal,and then in high excitement began pouring millions of dollarsinto ships and machines bound for the muddy planet. TheBoard of Directors met hoots of derision with secret smiles asthey rubbed their hands together softly. Special crews of psychologistswere dispatched to Venus to contact the natives;they returned, exuberant, with test-results that proved the nativeswere friendly, intelligent, co-operative and resourceful,and the Board of Directors rubbed their hands more eagerlytogether, and poured more money into the Piper VenusianInstallation.
It took money to make money, they thought. Let the foolslaugh. They wouldn't be laughing long. After all, Piper Pharmaceuticals,Inc., could recognize a gold mine when they sawone.
They thought.
Robert Kielland, special investigator and trouble shooter forPiper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., made an abrupt and intimateacquaintance with the fabulous Venusian mud when the landingcraft brought him down on that soggy planet. He hadtransferred from the great bubble-shaped orbital transport shipto the sleek landing craft an hour before, bored and impatientwith the whole proposition. He had no desire whatever to goto Venus. He didn't like mud, and he didn't like frontier projects.There had been nothing in his contract with Piper demandingthat he travel to other planets in pursuit of his duties,and he had balked at the assignment. He had even balked atthe staggering bonus check they offered him to help him getused to the idea.
It was not until they had convinced him that only his ownsuperior judgment, his razor-sharp mind and his extraordinarilyshrewd powers of observation and insight could possiblypull Piper Pharmaceuticals, Inc., out of the mudhole they'dgotten themselves into, that he had reluctantly agreed to go.He wouldn't like a moment of it, but he'd go.
Things weren't