Suddenly, he turned away from the window. "Bigman," he said, "come with me to the pilot room."

In two strides he was out the cabin. In two more, he was at the pilot room. The door wasn't locked. He pulled it open. Both pilots, George Reval and Tor Johnson, were at their places, eyes glued to the controls. Neither turned as they entered.

Lucky said, "Men…"

No response.

He touched Johnson's shoulder, and the co-pilot's arm twitched irritably, shaking off Lucky's grip.

The young Councilman seized Johnson by either shoulder and called, "Get the other one, Bigman!"

The little fellow was already at work on that very job, asking no questions, attacking with a bantam's fury.

Lucky hurled Johnson from him. Johnson staggered back, righted himself, and charged forward. Lucky ducked a wild blow and brought a straight-armed right to the side of the other's jaw. Johnson went down, cold. At nearly the same moment, Bigman, with a quick and skillful twist of George Reval's arm, flung him along the floor and knocked him breathless.

Bigman dragged both pilots outside the pilot room and closed the door on them. He came back to find Lucky handling the controls feverishly.

Only then did he ask for an explanation. "What hap pened?"

"We weren't leveling off," said Lucky grimly. "I watched the surface, and it was coming up too fast. It still is."

He strove desperately to find the particular control for the ailerons, those vanes that controlled the angle of flight. The blue surface of Venus was much closer. It was rushing at them.

Lucky's eyes were on the pressure gauge. It measured the weight of air above them. The higher it rose, the closer they were to the surface. It was climbing less quickly now. Lucky's fist closed more tightly on the duorod, squeezing the forks together. That must be it. He dared not exert force too rapidly or the ailerons might be whipped off altogether by the screaming gale that flung itself past their ship. Yet there was only five hundred feet to spare before zero altitude.

His nostrils flaring, the cords in his neck standing out, Lucky played those ailerons against the wind.

"We're leveling," breathed Bigman. "We're leveling…"

But there wasn't room enough. The blue-green came up and up till it filled all the view in the port. Then, with a speed that was too great and an angle that was also too great, the Venus Marvel, carrying Lucky Starr and Bigman Jones, struck the surface of the planet Venus.

had the surface of venus been what it seemed to be at first glance, the Venus Marvel would have smashed to scrap and burned to ash. The career of Lucky Starr would have ended at that moment.

Fortunately, the vegetation that had so thickly met the eye was neither grass nor shrubbery, but seaweed. The flat plain was no surface of soil and rock, but water, the top of an ocean that surrounded and covered all of Venus.

The Venus Marvel, even so, hit the ocean with a thunderous rattle, tore through the ropy weeds, and boiled its way into the depths. Lucky and Bigman were hurled against the walls.

An ordinary vessel might have been smashed, but the Venus Marvel had been designed for entering water at high speed. Its seams were tight; its form, streamlined. Its wings, which Lucky had neither time nor knowledge to retract, were torn loose, and its frame groaned under the shock, but it remained seaworthy.

Down, down it went into the green-black murk of the Venusian ocean. The cloud-diffused light from above was almost totally stopped by the tight weed cover. The ship's artificial lighting did not go on, its 20 workings apparently put out of order by the shock of contact.

Lucky's senses were whirling. "Bigman," he called.

There was no answer, and he stretched out his arms, feeling. His hand touched Bigman's face.

"Bigman!" he called again. He felt the little Martian's chest, and the heart was beating regularly. Relief washed over Lucky.

He had no way of telling what was happening to the ship. He knew he could never find any way of controlling it in the complete darkness that enveloped them. He could only hope that the friction of the water would halt the ship before it struck bottom.

He felt for the pencil flash in his shirt pocket-a little plastic rod some six inches long that, on activation by thumb pressure, became a solid glow of light that streamed out forward, its beam broadening without seeming to weaken appreciably.

Lucky groped for Bigman again and examined him gently. There was a lump on the Martian's temple, but no broken bones so far as Lucky could tell.

Bigman's eyes fluttered. He groaned.

Lucky whispered, "Take it easy, Bigman. We'll be all right." He was far from sure of that as he stepped out into the corridor. The pilots would have to be alive and cooperative if the ship were ever to see home port again.

They were sitting up, blinking at Lucky's flash as he came through the door.

"What happened?" groaned Johnson. "One minute I was at the controls, and then…" There was no hostility, only pain and confusion, in his eyes.

The Venus Marvel was back to partial normality. It was limping badly, but its searchlights, fore and aft, had been restored to operation and the emergency batteries had been rigged up to supply them with all the power they would need for vital operations. The churning of the propeller could be dimly heard, and the planetary coaster was displaying, adequately enough, its third function. It was a vessel that could navigate, not only in space and in air, but under water as well.

George Reval stepped into the control room. He was downcast and obviously embarrassed. He had a gash on his cheek, which Lucky had washed, disinfected, and neatly sprayed with koagulum.

Reval said, "There are a few minor seepages, but I plugged them. The wings are gone, and the main batteries are all junked up. We'll need all sorts of repairs, but I guess we're lucky at that. You did a good job,.Mr. Williams."

Lucky nodded briefly. "Suppose you tell me what happened."

Reval flushed. "I don't know. I hate to say it, but I don't know."

"How about you?" asked Lucky, addressing the other.

Tor Johnson, his large hands nursing the radio back to life, shook his head.

Reval said, "The last clear thoughts I can remember were while we were still inside the cloud layer. I remember nothing after that till I found myself staring at your flash."

Lucky said, "Do you or Johnson use drugs of any kind?"

Johnson looked up angrily. He rumbled, "No. Nothing."

"Then what made you blank out, and both at the same time, too?"

Reval said, "I wish I knew. Look, Mr. Williams, neither one of us is an amateur. Our records as coaster pilots are first class." He groaned. "Or at least we were first-class pilots. We'll probably be grounded after this."

"We'll see," said Lucky.

"Say, look," said Bigman, testily, "what's the use of talking about what's over and gone? Where are we now? That's what I want to know. Where are we going?"

Tor Johnson said, "We're 'way off our course. I can tell you that much. It will be five or six hours before we get out to Aphrodite." "Fat Jupiter and little satellites!" said Bigman, staring at the blackness outside the port in disgust. "Five or six hours in this black mess?"

Aphrodite is the largest city on Venus, with a population of over a quarter of a million.

With the Venus Marvel still a mile away, the sea about it was lit into green translucence by Aphrodite's lights. In the eerie luminosity the. dark, sleek shapes of the rescue vessels, which had been sent out to meet them after radio contact had been established, could be plainly made out. They slipped along, silent companions.