Assignment on Venus

Simms has been thrust into the most perilous posting of his career, wrestling through Venus’s rotting Blue Mold Swamp toward a half‑built jetty that marks the midpoint of his grim mission. The planet’s oppressive heat, choking fog and alien flora make every step a gamble, and the promise of a brief respite feels almost illusory. Yet the real danger lies not just in the environment but in the secrets he carries—a sealed cylinder that contains his own dishonorable discharge.

At the jetty he confronts three Earthmen—Halleck, Gately, and Sterns—who trade in the coveted Deleon Salts, the Kamali crystals rumored to grant eternal youth to the native peoples but lethal to humans. Their slick proposal to harvest and sell the salts pits profit against mortality, and they quickly reveal that Simms’s cylinder also holds a summons for reinforcements and a demand for his resignation. Caught between corporate greed and his own tarnished reputation, Simms must decide how far he’ll go to survive the swamp and the treachery it conceals.