
On a rain‑slick street of a distant colonial outpost, a disgraced former Space Patrol officer stumbles out of a drug‑laden den, barely coherent and still clutching the remnants of his last habit. Two stern uniformed officers haul him away, their grip firm and their tone urgent. The colonel before him, scarred but resolute, has a single request: the veteran’s skill is the only hope of reaching a woman stranded on the hostile world of Venus.
Elise, a lover from a past life, has vanished on the steaming, cloud‑shrouded surface of the planet, where an unseen menace stalks the ruins of forgotten colonies. Kenton, bitter and haunted, must choose between his own self‑destruction and a perilous rescue mission that could cost him everything. As the cruiser rockets toward the alien horizon, the promise of redemption flickers amid the toxic gases and alien mysteries that await.
Language
en
Duration
~55 minutes (52K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2020-05-09
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1911–1979
A pulp-era science fiction writer and editor, he helped shape the pages of Planet Stories in the 1940s and also wrote for early television. His work ranges from fast, adventurous space tales to crime, western, and mystery stories.
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