Chapter 5

“Wow!” exclaimed Roger.

“Jumping Jupiter!” commented Tom.

“Blast my jets!” roared Astro.

Rex Sinclair smiled as he maneuvered the sleek black space yacht in a tight circle a thousand feet above the Titan crystal roof of his luxurious home in the heart of the wild Venusian jungle.

“She’s built out of Venusian teak,” said Sinclair. “Everything but the roof. I wanted to keep the feeling of the jungle around me, so I used the trees right out of the jungle there.” He pointed to the sea of dense tropical growth that surrounded the house and cleared land.

The ship nosed up for a thousand yards and then eased back, smoothly braked, to a concrete ramp a thousand yards from the house. The touchdown was as gentle as a falling leaf, and when Sinclair opened the air lock, a tall man in worn but clean fatigues was waiting for them.

“Howdy, Mr. Sinclair,” he called, a smile on his lined, weather-beaten face. “Have a good trip?”

“Fine trip, George,” replied Sinclair, climbing out of the ship. “I want you to meet some friends of mine. Space Cadets Tom Corbett, Roger Manning, and Astro. They’re going to stay with us during their summer leave while they hunt for tyranno. Boys, this is my foreman, George Hill.”

The boys shook hands with the thick-set, muscular man, who smiled broadly. “Glad to meet you, boys. Always wanted to talk to someone from the Academy. Wanted to go there myself but couldn’t pass the physical. Bad eyes.”

Reaching into the ship, he began lifting out their equipment. “You chaps go on up to the house now,” he said. “I’ll take care of your gear.”

With Sinclair leading the way, the boys slowly walked up a flagstone path toward the house, and they had their first chance to see a Venusian plantation home at close range.

The Sinclair house stood in the middle of a clearing more than five thousand yards square. At the edges, like a solid wall of green vegetation, the Venusian jungle rose more than two hundred feet. It was noon and the heat was stifling. They were twenty-six million miles closer to the sun, and on the equator of the misty planet. While Astro, George, and Sinclair didn’t seem to mind the temperature, Tom and Roger were finding it unbearable.

“Can you imagine what it’ll be like in the house with that crystal roof!” whispered Roger.

“I’ll bet,” replied Tom. “But as soon as the sun drops out of the zenith, it should cool off some.”

When the group stepped up onto the porch, two house servants met them and took their gear. Then Sinclair and the foreman ushered the cadets inside. They were surprised to feel a distinct drop in temperature.

“Your cooling unit must be pretty large, Mr. Sinclair,” commented Tom, looking up at the crystal roof where the sun was clearly visible.

Sinclair smiled. “That’s special crystal, mined on Titan at a depth of ten thousand feet. It’s tinted, and shuts out the heat and glare of the sun.”

George then left to lay out their gear for their first hunt the next morning, and Sinclair took them on a tour of the house. They walked through long corridors looking into all the rooms, eventually winding up in the kitchen, and the three boys marveled at the simplicity yet absolute perfection of the place. Every modern convenience was at hand for the occupant’s comfort. When the sun had dropped a little, they all put on sunglasses with glareproof eye shields and walked around the plantation. Sinclair showed them his prize-winning stock and the vast fields of crops. Aside from the main house, there were only four other buildings in the clearing. They visited the smallest, a cowshed.

“Where do your field hands live, Mr. Sinclair?” asked Tom, as they walked through the modern, spotless, milking room.

“I don’t have any,” replied the planter. “Do most of the work with machinery, and George and the houseboys do what has to be done by hand.”

As they left the shed and started back toward the main house they came abreast of a small wooden structure. Thinking they were headed there, Roger started to open the door.

“Close that door!” snapped Sinclair. Roger jerked back. Astro and Tom looked at the planter, startled by the sharpness in his voice.

Sinclair smiled and explained, “We keep some experiments on different kinds of plants in there at special low temperatures. You might have let in hot air and ruined something.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Roger. “I didn’t know.”

“Forget it,” replied the planter. “Well, let’s get back to the house. We’re having an early dinner. You boys have to get started at four o’clock in the morning.”

“Four o’clock!” exclaimed Roger.

“Why?” asked Tom.

“We have to go deep into the thicket,” Astro explained, using the local term for the jungle, “so that at high noon we can make camp and take a break. You can’t move out there at noon. It gets so hot you’d fall on your face after fifteen minutes of fighting the creepers.”

“Everything stops at noon,” added Sinclair. “Even the tyrannosaurus. You have to do your traveling in the cool of the day, early and late. Six hours or so will take you far enough away from the plantation to find tracks, if there are any.”

“Tell me, Mr. Sinclair,” asked Roger suddenly, “is this the whole plantation?” He spread his hands in a wide arc, taking in the clearing to the edge of the jungle.

Sinclair grinned. “Roger, it’d take a man two weeks to go from one corner of my property to another. This is just where I live. Three years ago I had five hundred square miles under cultivation.”

Back in the house, they found George setting the table on the porch and his wife busy in the kitchen. Mrs. Hill was a stout woman, with a pleasant face and a ready smile. With very little ceremony, the cadets, Sinclair, George, and his wife sat down to eat. The food was simple fare, but the sure touch of Mrs. Hill’s cooking and the free use of delicate Venusian jungle spices added exotic flavor, new but immensely satisfying to the three hungry boys, a satisfaction they demonstrated by cleaning their plates quickly and coming back for second helpings. Astro, of course, was not happy until he had polished off his fourth round. Mrs. Hill beamed with pleasure at their unspoken compliment to her cooking.

After the meal, Mrs. Hill stacked the dishes and put them into a small carrier concealed in the wall. Pressing a button, near the opening, she explained, “That dingus takes them to the sink, washes them, dries them, and puts everything in its right place. That’s the kind of modern living I like!”

As the sun dropped behind the wall of the jungle and the sky darkened, they all relaxed. Sinclair and George smoked contentedly, Mrs. Hill brought out some needle point, and the three cadets rested in comfortable contour chairs. They chatted idly, stopping only to listen to the wild calls of birds and animals out in the jungle as George, or Sinclair, identified them all. George told of his experiences on tyrannosaurus hunts, and Astro described his method of hunting as a boy.