Donald A. Wollheim (ed) by The Hidden Planet Page A

for.
    "Sure." Jerry was cocky again,
banking on his luck. "Not another grunt from you, fellow. I can't take any
chances on this trip."
    The zloaht settled down on the clothes in the big and chewed slowly on a piece of
leather he'd found outside. Anything might happen now, but he had ideas of what
that anything might be. The bag jerked and twisted as the Master slipped past
the guards and out onto the rocket field where the hiss of rockets told Ignatz some ship was warming up, testing her exhaust. He
stuck his eye to a crack in the bag and peered out.
    It was an old freighter, but large and evidendy well-kept. They were moving the derricks back and
battening down the hatches, so the cargo was all aboard. From the smell, he
decided they were carrying raisins, peanuts and chocolate, all highly prized by
the spore prospectors on Venus. Venus grew little that equaled old Earth foods,
and only the most concentrated rations could be carried by those wandering
adventurers.
    As he watched, Ignatz saw a big tanker run out on the tracks and the hose tossed over to fill the
tanks with hydrogen peroxide to be burned into fuming exhaust gases by the
atomic converters; the isotope plates were already in, apparently. Mechanics
were scurrying around, inspecting the long blast tubes, and the field was swarming with airscrew tugs ready to pull the big freighter
up where her blast could shoot out harmlessly and her air fins get a grip on
the air.
    These big freighters were different from the
sleek craft that carried the passengers; the triangles were always neatly
balanced on their jets, but the freighter was helpless in the grip of a planet
unless buoyed up by the tugs until she reached a speed where the stubby fins supported
her.
    Evidently the Master had made it barely in time, for the crew plank was
being unhitched. He ran up it, presented his papers, and was ordered to his
berth. As he turned to leave, there was a halloo from below, and the plank was
dropped again. Blane , the freighter's captain, leaned
over, swearing.
    "Supercargo I Why can't he take a liner? All right, we'll wait for him twenty minutes." He
stumped up the stairs to the conning turret, and words drifted down sulfurously . "Every damned thing has gone wrong on
this trip. I'm beginning to think there's a Jonah in the crew."
    Jerry waited to hear no more, but moved to
his berth— a little
tin hole in the wall, with a hard
bunk, a pan of water, and a rod for his clothes. He tested the oxygen helmet
carefully, nodded his satisfaction, and stretched out on the bunk.
    "You stay there, Ignatz ,"
he ordered, "and keep quiet. There might be an inspection. I'll let you
out when I go on second shift. Anyway, there isn't a steampipe in the hole, so it wouldn't do you any good."
    The port above was closing
with a heavy bang. "Supercargo must have come up early. Wonder who he
was? Must have been somebody important to hold Plane waiting for him—friend of
the O.M.'s, I guess." He grinned comfortably, then wiped it off his face as a shout came down the stairwell.
    "Hey, down there! Bring up some tools, and make it snappy. The crew port's stuck, and we're taking off in five
minutes."
    Jerry swore, and Ignatz turned over with a disgruntled snort. "Well," the Master reflected,
"at least I won't get the blame for it this time. But it's funny, all the
same. Darned funny!"
    Ignatz agreed. This promised to be an interesting
voyage, if they ever reached Venus at all. If the Master had to keep a zloaht for a pet, he might have stayed on the ground where their necks would
have been safe, instead of running off on this crazy chase after a girl. For
once he was glad that Venus knew no sex—unless the incubator cows were called
females.
    Jerry let Ignatz out when he came back from shift. He was tired and grouchy, but nothing had
gone wrong in particular.
    There
had been two minor accidents, and one of the tenders had his foot smashed by a
loose coupling, but a certain amount of that had to be