[Illustration: _"We've got to get a ship through to earth, Captain," the Major said. "Can't your ship be fixed?" The Captain shook his head slowly._]
"It does, but you couldn't make the earth in that--and survive. The lifeboat carries just enough fuel to land on a planet. That fuel would be used on the takeoff."
"But if you got off Venus and aimed the boat toward the earth, nothing would keep it from getting there, would it?"
"Then we've got to do it. Yes, yes, I know. It's suicide. But it's suicide not to try it. We simply must get a message through to the earth. We'll ask for volunteers."
"No need of that, Major," the captain said. "I'll make the trip."
"One man couldn't do it," broke in Lieutenant Riley. "I'm going along."
"You know what it means?" the captain asked his friend.
"Any spaceman knows what a forty-five million mile trip in a lifeboat means, you mug," the lieutenant replied. "But I'd rather die quickly in a crash landing than to face what the Venusians probably have thought up for us when they whittle us down to their size."
"Umph!" said Captain Bonnet, who had been a hero before.
"I was about to say: we'd better get started. It's getting late."
"Good! Take a detail to your ship and get the lifeboat ready. Then you and the lieutenant get some rest. I'll call you in an hour for the takeoff."
_The Piece of Sky's_ lifeboat was scarcely one hundred feet in length. It was powered by fourteen rocket valves, fed from detachable fuel containers, so arranged that as fast as a fuel drum was emptied it could be dropped from the rocket. The ship was streamlined from the nose to tail, but it was flattened on the bottom, so that either of two possible types of landing maneuvers could be attempted.
Attempted was the correct word, for lifeboats of space ships were never the last word in navigable machines. They were to be used only as a last resort under desperate circumstances. No lifeboat had ever been built as a machine for lengthy interplanetary travel. But the universe is foolproof to a certain extent. Any piece of matter is sure to obey the laws of the universe. Captain Bonnet supposed that if the lifeboat succeeded in taking off, and if it were put on the right orbit, it could reach the earth in time to send reinforcements back to Venus.
