VENUS HAS GREEN EYES
By CARL SELWYN
Space-trotting Flip Miller was prisoner
of the lovely, cruel Venusian queen. It
looked like star's end for the stubborn-jawed
young Earthling until he remembered that
women are women—on Earth or on Venus!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Charlie Mead, trapper, and Flip Miller, ex-prospector, started aforty-day drunk. Charlie just liked the idea. Flip had reasons.
"In a few hours it'll be wetter'n a swamp duck's gullet," said Charlie,grinning behind his whiskers. "And darker'n West Pluto!" Charliehad been trapping otters here for five years and accepted the longnights as resignedly as the mud, the eternal fog and the heat. Hepoured another glass of loku, squinted at its blue sparkle in thetube-light. The gray mists swirled through the open door and the rawwind whistled through the rusty holes in the wall.
Flip leaned back against the bundles of fur and held up four fingers.
"To hell with the following," he counted, "I.M.C., radios, fueltanks, and this soggy planet of yours, Venus!"
Noted for his wild-goose chases and wilder ideas, Flip Miller wasalways running into trouble. In fact it was just two months ago thatthe Space Patrol found him marooned on Pallas. He had one pint of airleft when they found him, said he fell out of his plane while lookingfor diamonds. The Patrol took him to Mars. There, he immediately gotin a poker game and made a fortune—and immediately got in another andlost it all. That is, all except a doubtful map of a Venusian xanitemine which nobody else would accept as stakes. Which was his reason forbeing here, if Flip ever needed a sane reason for being anywhere.
For once however his screwball ventures panned out.
"And I've been here all these years without knowing a billion dollarswas in my back yard," said Charlie who considered the matter veryfunny. "Leastwise it was a billion till—"
"Shut up, you blinking old veedle-chaser," said Flip. People alwayslaughed at his misfortunes. Maybe it was because he did too....
Charlie's island was in the middle of the Black Swamp. The mine wasa few hundred miles east. Fused with asphalt and deep in the mire,thousands of miles from nowhere, it was small wonder it had lain thereunvisited since its original discovery. The map had passed through thehands of sundry dissolute, short-lived sourdoughs till the locationbecame as dubious as other bar-room talk. It was Flip's luck that themap eventually got around to him. He was probably the only man in thesystem who would have believed in it.
Filled with quick visions, he'd figured his treasure up on the spot. Itwould cost about fifty dollars a ton to get it out of the swamp, smeltthe asphalt and ship the ore to Earth. On Earth xanite ore was worthover a thousand dollars a ton.
Then the fates ran amuck.
His plane's fuel tank sprang a leak. Flip lost every drop of thereserve that was to carry him back to the mainland. The mainland was25,000 miles away. Then his sending set blew a transformer and hecouldn't radio for help. Last, while trying to ascertain his positionon the receiving set, he heard that I.M.C.—Interstellar MetallurgicalCompany—had just opened a gigantic xanite deposit on Mars. The Marketquoted xanite now at twenty dollars a ton. Venusian xanite suddenlywasn't worth swamp water.
"It shore is too bad," continued