Operation Venus

by John Russell Fearn

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Two pilots crash their plane in the Brazilian jungle, becoming the prisoner of an English explorer who is ruling by fear the superstitious unknown race who inhabit the city. The fabulous city, protected by scientific means, had given rise to the legend of El Dorado. These people had been created centuries earlier by Venusian scientists to tend the city and their many scientific machines whilst they placed themselves in suspended animation, embarking on a mental exploration of the cosmos. The Venusians had been obliged to relocate to Earth when their home planet was devastated by a plague. Then the Sleepers awake and the action switches to Venus, where they attempt to repopulate it.

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

To Nick Draycott the ceaseless whining of the stratojet’s motors had become almost a part of his life; motors that had never once faltered in their screaming rhythm since he and his fellow flyer, Vincent Marston, had left London.

Two days without touching the ground on the fastest ever world-hop. London to Madrid, across Italy, Soviet Russia and Mongolia, at times playing tag with the barrier of sound itself. And now the Pacific Ocean again with only the American continent between them and home.

Nick sat hunched over the controls like Rodin’s statue of the Thinker, save that both his powerful hands were on the control switches. His massive leather-jacketed shoulders overflowed the back of the strongly sprung seat; a pillar of a neck poked from the jacket top supporting a head on which was tumbled blonde hair. A side view revealed his face as one strongly masculine—full, firm lips, a straight nose, grey eyes. Yes, he was almost handsome, this young Hercules who had so far whisked every aeronautical trophy out of his beloved Great Britain.

His companion seated before the radio and charts in the neighbouring seat was cast in a different mould. He was less in stature, wiry and strong, seated folded up like a wire spring about to uncoil. His features were thin to the point of being haggard, etched out in a cynical smile that typified his constant attitude towards life—one of dry tolerance and good humour. There was precious little which could ruffle Vince Marston: he had seen life in too many spheres, usually high above the earth, for that.

“Can you imagine how they’ll start yelling when we get back?” Nick asked suddenly, grinning. “I can just picture ’em! Police squads, girls, the mayor, banquets—Hell, I’d much rather go to bed and let things drift, eh?”

Vince’s only response was a shrug. He was busy with calculations.

“At the moment we’re about fifty miles from Hawaii,” he commented. “That should bring us home in about—”

He paused and switched on the radio as it buzzed noisily on the emergency circuit. The mechanical voice of a weather bureau announcer came forth.

“Calling all Pacific Ocean sea and aircraft in Quadrants Seven and Nine! Hurricane expected in these areas, bearing south eastwards. Be on your guard. Seek shelter. That is all.”

“Hurricane, eh?” Nick wrinkled his nose and stared over the seascape. Far away in the distance he could see the Hawaiian Islands: directly ahead, low down on the horizon, was a faint smudge which denoted the westernmost Americas.

“Next time I think we’ll equip this damned thing with floats,” Vince murmured, his cold blue eyes directed through the window. “If we had them on now we could find shelter because unless I’m crazy that is the hurricane right behind us!”

Nick twisted round and stared through the rear window. Far to the back of them the blue sky had paled to misty greyness: with the seconds it crept into visibly deepening darkness. Tendrils of angry nimbus spread across the sky like frost over a window pane.

“Say, this is serious!” Nick’s jaws clamped together suddenly. He swung back again and slammed the controls, fighting desperately for altitude.

“We skip round the darned world with hardly a shower and now we’re nearly home we get this!” he growled.

Vince gave a sigh. “I told you to avoid the hurricane belt, but of course I’m only your friend and sidekick, so—”

“Shut up, will you? How near is it?”

Nick swung his head, a frown on his features. The sunshine had gone. The peaceful calm of the seascape had changed to sombre hues. Above the scream of the plane’s motors came a slowly rising crescendo of sound. Little buffetings of wind banged around the flyer’s fuselage.

“Beautiful!” Vince observed. “Positively beautiful!”

Nick twirled back again, his face carved by strain. He stared at the cloud-ridden remoter heights for which he was aiming. He gave the motors every vestige of power, shooting the ’plane with bullet-like velocity into the upper reaches with a force which pressed he and Vince hard back in their seats.

But the flyer did not quite make it. Suddenly, in all its demoniacal fury, the hurricane arrived. The whispering puffs and tuggings of its approach resolved suddenly into a cataclysmic nightmare of impacts. The whole atmosphere was screaming, a howling tempest whipping creamy rollers along the sea below. Rain slashed against the observation window with unbridled ferocity.

Plunging and leaping helplessly the flyer twisted and turned in its frantic efforts to rise. It was beaten down, refusing to respond to Nick’s frenzied coaxing. Vince sat with a frozen, fatalistic smile on his face, clutching the radio instruments for support. He flashed a glance outside as a piece of bodywork tore off with a noise like rending calico.

“No use!” Nick panted at length. “If we try and fight this we’ll be blown down in two shakes. Our only course is to fly with it.”

“And to hell with one perfectly good world record,” Vince groaned. “Why did I ever become a stratoflyer?”

Nick swung the machine round with difficulty, easing the tail into the very teeth of the hurricane. Instantly the entire machine was caught bodily in the tempest’s grip and began to scream across the ocean like a leaf in a gale. Keeping position as well as possible as the control room rocked and swung crazily, Nick held the machine’s nose straight ahead. His eyes began to fill with bitter regret as he realized how far they were swinging from their appointed course.

“Just where are we heading?” he shouted, after ten minutes of roaring wind and rain.

Vince hunched himself over the compass in its universal mountings, keeping his body passably steady. Five minutes more slipped by before he answered.

“As near as I can make out the hurricane has veered south-eastwards, just as the weather bureau forecasted. We’re still over the Pacific, some two hundred miles east of Christmas Island—and no sign of Santa Claus!”

“Quit clowning!” Nick roared. “What direction are we taking?”

“South-east, of course. What the hell else did you expect?”

“Anyway, the darned thing may blow itself out after we’ve crossed the Equator,” Nick grunted. “In that case—”

He stopped, startled eyes on the fuel-gauge. “Sweet Hades!” he whistled.

Vince looked too and sucked his teeth. The gauge was down to three-quarters minus.

“Must have used up the juice in fighting the wind for altitude,” he said, thinking. “Of all the cockeyed ideas! Unless the wind drops we shan’t have enough to get back to London in any case.”

Nick became silent, staring at the sweeping rain on the window. The vision of failure when so near to home was too much to contemplate …

It was many hours before the hurricane abated. By gradual degrees it subsided and at last evaporated into nothing. Nick began to relax a little, breathing a long whistle of relief as the sun streamed forth in all its tropical glory. He peered at the sprawling country below glancing anxiously at the still further lowered fuel-gauge.

Vince looked up from the instruments and nodded his head to below.

“That’s the northwest corner of South America. Probably Ecuador. Right now we’re heading across Peru to the east. That means about three thousand miles to Rio de Janeiro. We haven’t enough fuel to make it.”

“You’re telling me!” Nick scowled in thought. “Okay, we’ll turn back to Puerto Rico. One of our own fuelling stations is there.”

He threw in the rudder-fin control and waited for the flyer to swing round—but it didn’t. It flew on in a straight line. Nick gave a start, repeated the action with more energy, but still nothing happened. Vince angled his face against the glass and squinted at the tail-fin. It told its own story: sundered wires were hanging down forlornly.

“We can’t turn,” he said finally. “Unpleasant though it is, we’ve got to go on in a straight line or else drop and try and fix the damage.”

“Drop? Down there?” Nick looked ominously at the alternately rock and verdure-ridden terrain.

“Hardly to be recommended,” Vince admitted. “If we keep on going in a straight line we might make either Pernambuco or Rio. I always said they should build stratojet planes so you can get outside and make repairs. Wonder why my ideas don’t appeal to people?”

Nick sat biting his lip in thought, and finally he shrugged.

“We might just make it,” he muttered. “Try anyway. Depends on the fuel. Better send out a radio call in case we get into difficulties.”

“In case!” Vince echoed blankly; then he sat down before the apparatus. “Nick Draycott world-hop flyer calling,” he intoned repeatedly into the mike, until at length the accented tongue of the Pernambuco airmet radio station answered.

“Call received. Go ahead.”

“Carried some two thousand miles off course by hurricane. Now flying over North West Brazil, approximately five degrees south, sixty minutes west. Will call again. Heading for Rio or Pernambuco. Please relay.”

“Okay, we’ll keep in touch. Weather ahead is good. Hope you make it.”

“You and us both,” Vince growled, and switched off.

Nick waggled the useless tail-fin control furiously. Finally he gave it up and concentrated on the compensating controls, holding the ’plane as near to a straight course as possible by the compass.

Far below the terrain changed slowly as the machine moved with bullet swiftness over the pure virgin greenness of the Brazilian interior. The main worry to Nick was the strong head wind into which he was driving. His face grew gradually grimmer as with the passing time the fuel indicator level sank lower and lower …

In two hours, with only half the distance covered, it had sunk to zero. Motionless, Nick and Vince sat staring at it; then they looked at each other, and finally on the green world below.

“This head wind!” Nick raved. “We’re sunk, Vince—good and proper—”

He broke off as the motors gave an ominous splutter. For the first time since the start of the trip they coughed over the dwindling fuel, banging and backfiring furiously. Nick eased in the last drops.

“Calling Pernambuco!” Vince shouted, snapping on the radio transmitter. “Draycott world-hop calling! We’re falling! Send help! Three degrees south, fifty-five minutes west.”

He twirled round as the motors went dead. He sat motionless in his seat. Like two images he and Nick stared down at the sea of green rushing up swiftly to meet them. The wind soughed through the streamlining as the ’plane dropped with ever increasing swiftness. Nick manœuvred frantically, as well as he could without a tail-fin. He dipped and tilted to ease the fall, his whole being concentrated on the task.

But Vince saw something else during these wild plungings, something in the distance perhaps five miles away. It glittered with silvery brightness in the dying light of the sun. Just like a mirror—

Then he held his breath as gargantuan trees swept up to meet the ship.

There was a monstrous splintering and rending, followed by a stunning concussion which hurled him out of his seat. Nick shouted hoarsely as tree branches smashed through the window, as he belted backwards against the wall with an impact that knocked the senses out of him. Darkness closed in on his racked body.

NICK became subconsciously aware of scorching liquid coursing down his throat, of a surge of vitality back to consciousness. Dazedly he opened his eyes, moved suddenly, then winced at a wrenching pain in his shoulder.

It took him a moment or two to piece things together— Then he remembered. Vince was bending over him in the light of a small, newly kindled fire. The heavy darkness of. . .