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by THORNTON AYRE
A startling thing came out of the wird box Bill Dawlish fournd on Venus. What was its grim purpose?
The feting and speechifying were over—and Bill Dawlish looked heartily thankful for it.
"Damned good job I don't go to Venus and back every day!" he grinned, seated at the head of our reunion dinner table. "Spencer got to the Moon and back in 1970; I've made this trip ten years later. And in another ten years . . . ?" He shrugged off the speculation and went on with his meal.
There were four of us present—Bill Dawlish himself; his taciturn, strong-necked co-explorer Ralph Trent; myself—Bob Hansen, as the inventor of the machine that had done the trick; and Madge, my wife. Here we were in a little quartet, safe from the public gaze, in my quiet New Jersey home.
"If the truth were told," Ralph Trent commented presently, "Bill here is holding out on us. He found something on the Dark Terminator of Venus that's enormously valuable. So he says! But he won’t tell us what it is."
Bill grinned. "Not yet. Somebody might want to frisk it, and I want to see what happens first. Nobody's to know a thing."
"It" was a steel-bound box, heavily combination locked, which had gone
