Bova, Ben - Death On Venus

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Death on VenusBen BovaMy name is Van Humphries. I will be the first human

being to reach the hell-hot surface of the planet Venus, or I will die in the

attempt.My father gave me no other choice.All my life my father had looked

down on me; despised me and my illness, sneeringly called me "Runt." Sick from

birth, I’d been born with a form of pernicious anemia because of my mother’s

drug addiction. She had died giving birth to me, and my father blamed me for

her death. He claimed she was the only woman he had ever truly loved, and I

had killed her.Father--Martin Humphries--lived in Selene City on the Moon

where he played his chosen roles of interplanetary tycoon; megabillionaire;

hell-raising, womanizing, ruthless corrupt giant of industry; founder and head

of Humphries Space Systems, Inc.My older brother, Alex, was the apple of

Father’s eye. But three years ago Alex was killed on the first human mission

to Venus. His ship entered the clouds that totally cover our sister planet,

but never came out again."It should’ve been you, Runt!" Father howled when

we got the news. "It should’ve been you who died, not Alex."Father stewed in

helpless fury for months, then suddenly announced that he would give a

ten-billion-dollar prize to whoever returned Alex’s remains to him.Ten

billion dollars! I would have thought that half the world would leap at the

chance to claim the prize. But then I realized that no one in his right mind

would dare to try.As beautiful as Venus appears in our skies, the planet

itself is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough

to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft

landers as if they were flimsy cardboard cartons. The sky is perpetually

covered from pole to pole with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a

choking mixture of carbon dioxide and sulfurous gases.But Martin Humphries

wanted his son’s remains returned to him. So he offered his ten-billion-dollar

prize.And he did one other thing. He cut off my stipend, as of my

twenty-fifth birthday. On that date I became penniless.I had loved Alex, the

big brother who’d protected me as best as he could from Father’s cruel

disdain. I decided that I would go to Venus and find his remains.If I was

successful, I would be financially secure and independent of Father for the

rest of my life.If I failed, I would join Alex on the red-hot surface of

Venus.I was not the only desperate one aiming for the prize money, I

discovered. Lars Fuchs, a "rock rat" from the Asteroid Belt, was also on his

way to Venus. From what Father told me, Fuchs was a monster. I had never seen

my father look so disturbed about anyone. My father hated Lars Fuchs, that was

apparent. He was also quite clearly afraid of him.* * *We travelled from

Earth orbit to Venus orbit in a converted freighter named Truax. Tethered to

the shabby old bucket was Hesperos, the craft that we would ride into the

clouds of Venus and down to the planet’s surface. Hesperos was small but

efficient, a cross between a dirigible and submarine that would glide through

Venus’ thick clouds and carry us all the way down to the ground, where the

atmospheric pressure was about the same as the pressure of ocean water more

than a kilometer below the surface.I had wanted Tomas Rodriguez to captain

Hesperos, but Father had insisted on putting one of his former mistresses in

charge, Desiree Duchamp. Tomas reluctantly accepted being bumped to

second-in-command. Captain Duchamp, in turn, brought her daughter along.

Marguerite was a biologist, of all things. Who needed a biologist on a planet

as dead and devastated as Venus?I soon found out two things: Captain Duchamp

wanted her daughter with her because my lecherous father had his eye on her.

And Marguerite Duchamp was a clone of her mother.As Marguerite explained to

me, "Mother’s always said she’s never met a man she’d trust to father a child

with her. So she cloned herself and had the embryo implanted in herself. Eight

and a half months later I was born."It was a tense two months, going from

Earth to Venus. At last the day arrived when we were to transfer from Truax to

Hesperos, leaving the old freighter in orbit with a skeleton crew aboard

her.* * *I took one last look at my stateroom. When we had boarded Truax

the single room had seemed rather cramped and decidedly shabby to me. Over the

nine weeks of our flight to Venus, though, I’d grown accustomed to having my

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Bova, Ben - Death On Venus

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