Thunder to Venus

By Joseph J. Millard

Joseph J. Millard's great reputation to pulp science fiction fans rests largely on two works—his short novels The Gods Hate Kansas and Thunder to Venus.

Thunder to Venus is a rip-roaring adventure set in space, as Titus Conway, a ruthless business tycoon, blacklists Lane Shannon and tries to banish him from the space-ways. There's a bitter showdown coming in the trackless void, pitting one determined man against the vast resources of an interstallar company!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479460120

Book preview

THUNDER TO VENUS

by JOSEPH J. MILLARD

Table of Contents

Thunder to Venus

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1942, renewed 1970 by Joseph J. Millard.

Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1942.

Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

CHAPTER I

The Take-Off

The Turtle squatted in her blast-off cradle, old and ungraceful Eternal Venusian fog writhed with tendrils of dirty cream around her bulbous glassite nose, enclosing her stark ugliness and her flaring sides in an opaque shroud.

She sat like a poor relation, screened by the fog from the Administration Building and the sprawling acreage of Venus City Spaceport. Once, about eight years in the past, the Turtle had been known as the most modern rocket ferry in the System.

Now she was a tub, one of five that made up Trans-Venus Ferries, smallest and least important of Titus Conway’s vast spaceline holdings. This subsidiary line bridged the nine-hundred-mile fogbound swamp between Venus City and Swampedge, on the South Highland.

Technically, the Turtle was the CC-4, also known to the disillusioned pilots of the line as Conway Coffin Number Four. Designed and constructed on Venus to fly the soupy Venusian atmosphere, she was not a spaceship and had never seen the sun. She was simply an ugly, utilitarian old ferry boat.

But to Lane Shannon, standing high on the pilot’s catwalk like a disembodied spirit in the fog, she was the most-beautiful craft ever flown. She was his first command.

Ignoring the eternal drip and the steamy heat, Lane Shannon stood stiff and proud outside the control cabin, looking down at the line of passengers who materialized out of the fog to vanish into the big hulk. Vro planters and their families, salesmen, buyers, inspectors: all were bound for the culture plantations on South Highland. All were entrusting their lives to Lane Shannon’s skill and ability.

Not bad, Shannon thought, grinning. Not bad at all for a young, guy of twenty-five, fresh from a junior berth on a Lunar freighter. And six months from now he’d be given full command of a big Conway cargo ship on the Earth-Venus run. This ferry line was the intermediate step, the proving ground for Conway captains of tomorrow.

Beyond Shannon, shadowy inside the control cabin, Tubby Martin, maintenance chief, was completing tests, hand-pumping each plunger of the multiple throttle bank. Down at the Turtle’s tail, mechanics in glistening rubberoid coveralls were watching as each individual tube spat its tongue of flame into the inverted cup of a Johnson Repulsometer, to test for proper pressure.

A whistle bleated, its echoes swallowed by the thick mist. The last passenger ducked into the hull and the gangplank rode eerily away. Down below, mechanics wheeled the Repulsometer away and ducked for the protection of the splash-awnings.

Mack Drummond, Trans-Venus dispatcher, came out on Shannon’s catwalk, lumpy in his glistening slicker.

Your floating palace is ready to scram, sucker, he grinned at Shannon. And need I remind you that this hunk of rusty scrap iron costs quite a couple of dollars and is only valuable when fully assembled in one piece. Treat it kindly. A dollar doesn’t mean a bit more to Titus Conway than his right eye, both arms and his only daughter.

I’ll treasure it, Shannon chuckled, half seriously, and reached for the sign-out book. Any special orders?

"Nope. Except to keep the high trajectory over Moulin Range. Besides fifty-three paying passengers and five dead-heads, you’re hauling eighteen caterocket tractors on the keel flat, which is about ten thousand pounds’ overload. And don’t get excited if the beam cuts out on you a time or two.

Old ‘Tight-Pants’ Conway’ll spend a million bucks to steal somebody’s freight line legally—but try and get the fifty bucks I, need to repair my transmitter! If the beam dies, just hold your course and it’ll come back as fast as I can fix it.

Okay, Shannon nodded. But try not to cut me out over Morgreb Gap. That cross-wind through there must hit at least three hundred miles an hour.

Tubby Martin, climbing out onto the walk beside them, made a grimace.

Three-twenty, measured velocity, he growled. And how these crates will drift when that crosswind hits ’em! Your motors check okay—by Conway standards, which ignore a little matter of eight per cent pressure loss on Number Four Ring and tubes a thousand hours overdue for grinding.

How’s my mush? Shannon asked.

Rotten, Martin said flatly. "Every other outfit in the System has switched to that new High-X Superfuel. When they threw out their old Standard mush, Conway bought it up at a bargain and we’re stuck with it. It’s five years old, lumpy and full of mush-bugs.

But what’s that against a dollar-ten-a-hundred discount? If a lump clogs your main jet feed, you’ll be hunting for the bottom of Bottomless Swamp. Good luck, anyhow, he added sourly.

Thanks. Shannon opened the door to the control cabin.

How’s the fever now? Drummond asked seriously. Did you do what I told you to?

Shannon nodded. Recovering from the usual newcomer’s attack of Venus fever, he still suffered occasional spasms of wracking chills.

"Yeah. I slipped back of your communibeam panel and took a healthy snort of bak-bak, as you suggested. Man, that’s liquid fire!"

Okay. But I hope none of Conway’s spotters saw you. He loves to fire pilots for drinking on duty, because then the law gives him the right to snatch their pension fund. Well, happy blasting, sucker.

Still grinning, Shannon dogged home the glassite port, glanced over his controls and settled himself into the pilot’s bucket. Drummond and Martin vanished into the fog, followed a moment later by the retreating catwalk. On the control board, a buzzer whirred and a red light glowed. Shannon cut in the ignition and felt the shudder as the tubes fired. He idled them a moment, waiting.

The buzzer stopped and