2
led the airtight groundcar.
There came a new swaying that was not the roughness of the terrain. Through the thick windshield Jan saw all the ground about him buckle and heave for a second or two before it settled to rugged quiescence again. This time he was really heaved about.
Jan mentioned this to the groundcar radio.
"That's the third time in half an hour," he commented. "The place tosses like the IJsselmeer on a rough day."
"You just don't forget it isn't the Zuider Zee," retorted Heemskerk from the other end. "You sink there and you don't come up three times."
"Don't worry," said Jan. "I'll be back on time, with a broom at the masthead."
"This I shall want to see," chuckled Heemskerk; a logical reaction, considering the scarcity of brooms on Venus.
* * * * *
Two hours earlier the two men had sat across a small table playing chess, with little indication there would be anything else to occupy their time before blastoff of the stubby gravity-boat. It would be their last chess game for many months, for Jan was a member of the Dutch colony at Oostpoort in the northern hemisphere of Venus, while Heemskerk was pilot of the G-boat from the Dutch spaceship Vanderdecken, scheduled to begin an Earthward orbit in a few hours.
It was near the dusk of the 485-hour Venerian day, and the Twilight Gale already had arisen, sweeping from the comparatively chill Venerian nightside into the superheated dayside. Oostpoort, established near some outcroppings that contained uranium ore, was protected from both the Dawn Gale and the Twilight Gale, for it was in a valley in the midst of a small range of mountains.
Jan had just figured out a combination by which he hoped to cheat Heemskerk out of one of his knights, when Dekker, the burgemeester of Oostpoort, entered the spaceport ready room.
"There's been an emergency radio message," said Dekker. "They've got a passenger for the Earthship over at Rathole."
"Rathole?" repeat