all ports!" he snapped.

"Close ports it is, sir," droned Chester Sand, the Safety Officer. Warning bells rang throughout the ship. Tiny green lights came winking into view on one of the many indicator panels.

"All ports closed, sir!" the Safety Officer sang out a minute later. For a moment Gerry bent over the rail of the platform and himself glanced down at the solid bank of green lights on the board.

"Start helicopters!" he ordered.

There was a low humming. The ship began to vibrate gently. From his place in the dome, Gerry could see the Viking's dozen big helicopters begin to spin. Faster and faster they moved as Angus McTavish gave his engines full power. Then the ship rose straight up into the air.

"Here we go, boys—Venus or bust!" Steve Brent muttered under his breath, and a low chuckle swept across the control room.

The lighted surface of the airport fell swiftly away beneath them. The myriad lights of New York were spread out like a jeweled carpet in the night, dwindling and seeming to slide together as the drive of the Viking's powerful motors carried her steadily upward. At the three thousand-foot level they passed a traffic balloon with its circle of blue lights, and the signal blinker spelled out a hasty "Good Luck!"

At the thirty thousand-foot level they passed an inbound Oriental & Western liner, bringing the night mail from China. She hung motionless on her helicopters to let the Viking pass, her siren giving a salute of three long blasts while her passengers crowded the decks to cheer the space-ship. After another ten thousand feet they were above ordinary traffic lanes. The glass windows of the control room were beginning to show a film of condensing moisture, and Steve Brent brought the heavy duralite panes up into place.

"Stand by rocket motors!" Gerry commanded. "Stand by to fold helicopters. Ready? Contact!"

There was a muffled roar. The Viking's nose tilted sharply upward. Momentarily the space-ship trembled like a living thing. Then she shot ahead, while the helicopters dropped down into recesses within the hull and duralite covers slid into place over them. Gerry climbed down from the dome into the main control room. Momentarily he glanced at the huge brass and steel speed indicators.

"Twelve hundred miles an hour," he said. "Fast enough for this density of atmosphere. Hold her there. Summon heads of departments and all deck officers to the chart room."

The call was quickly answered.

The assembled officers stood leaning against the walls, or perched on the chart-lockers. Now that the trip had actually begun, uniform coats were unbuttoned and caps laid aside. Angus McTavish had a battered brier pipe clenched in his teeth. The stem was so short that the swirling smoke seemed to filter upward through his whiskers.

"Better be careful, Mac," said Portok the Martian. "Maybe the air filters won't be able to handle that smoke of yours."

"Never mind the air filters, sonny!" grunted the big Scot with imperturbable good humor. "They'll handle the smoke of good 'baccy better than the fumes of that filthy grricqua weed you smoke on Mars."

A radio loud-speaker had been left on, and they heard the voice of an announcer on some European station:

"We now bring you a brief sports résumé. In Canton, China, the Shantung Dragons played a double header with the Budapest Magyars. The score of the first game was...."

"Wonder if they ever heard of baseball on Venus!" Steve Brent chuckled.

"Maybe they'll learn as fast as we of Mars," said Portok. "I seem to remember that in the last Interplanetary Championship Series we...."

"Skip it!" Steve growled. "I lost a week's salary on that series."

McTavish and Portok grinned.

Gerry Norton watched them with a smile on his lean, dark face. They were a good crowd! The Viking was going on the most dangerous journey mankind had ever attempted, a journey from which no one had ever before returned alive, but he could not have asked for a better group of subordinates. They were people of his own choosing, and all but two were old shipmates. Though he had never sailed with Chester Sand, the Safety Officer had been highly recommended. Neither had he ever sailed with Olga Stark before, but he knew her by reputation as an excellent navigator and when she applied to go he felt he should accept her.

For half an hour Gerry held them together, while he set the watches and checked assignments and outlined other routine details. Then the meeting ended, and only Steve Brent remained with him. They walked forward into the darkened control room, where the only light was the dim glow from the indicator boards. The Quartermaster on watch stood motionless beside the steering levers.

Gerry noticed that he had a tendency to rise a couple of inches off the floor with each step. The pull of Earth was already lessening! He threw the switch that controlled the attraction-gear, and heard a faint hiss of shifting gravity plates beneath their feet. The feeling and impression of normal weight returned.

For a moment Gerry and Steve stood looking out one of the big duralite windows of the control room. At this level the legions of stars gleamed with an unreal brilliance in the dead black of the heavens. The Earth was a vast globe behind them, glowing for a quarter of its surface with the familiar outlines of the continents still visible. With the lessening pull, the Viking had increased speed to five thousand, but she seemed to be standing still in comparison with the vastness of space.

"Funny thing, Chief," Steve Brent said meditatively, "Olga Stark and Chester Sand are not supposed to have met before they came aboard this ship—but I saw them whispering together in that dark corner off Corridor 6 as I came forward."

"Maybe she's just a fast worker," Gerry said. For a moment the incident irritated him, but then he shrugged and forgot it. On a purely scientific and exploratory expedition of this kind, there was no possible motive for any underhand work.

The days passed in slow progression. The Viking had attained her maximum speed of fifty thousand miles an hour as the ceaseless drive of her great rocket motors forced her ahead, a speed possible in the void of outer space where there was no air to create friction. For all her great speed by Earthly standards, she was but crawling slowly across the vastness of Interplanetary space.

Life on board had settled down to a smooth routine. Now and then alarm bells would suddenly ring a warning of the approach of a small planetesimal or some other vagrant wanderer of outer space, and the ship would change course to avoid a collision. Otherwise there was little excitement. Astern, the familiar Earth had dwindled to a shining disc—like the button on an airman's uniform. Ahead, the cloud-veiled planet of Venus drew steadily nearer.

Passing along one of B-deck corridors one day, Gerry met Olga Stark coming out of the recreation rooms. She was off duty at the moment, and instead of her uniform she wore a long gown of green silk. Her dark hair was surmounted by a polished metal cap, and a thin gauze veil hung to her chin. Gerry stopped her with a gesture.

"Very decorative, Lieutenant," he said with a twitch of his lips, "but this is supposed to be a scientific expedition. I must ask that you wear your uniform outside of your cabin."

"I am off duty!" she retorted, her dark eyes suddenly angry and sullen.

"It's true that you're not on watch at this moment, but everybody is on duty twenty-four hours a day till this expedition is over. Resume your uniform."

"And if I refuse?" she asked.

"You'll go into double irons. When I'm commanding a ship, I do just that!"

For a moment their glances met, the woman's hot and angry, the man's cold and unyielding. Then, without another word, she swept away to her cabin. Gerry Norton sighed, and went on