SIX DAYS AFTER LEAVING Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by ganet, the tough little two headed pack animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force belt that encircled the planet’s equator. Now our drivers changed to boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy jagua canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
“We’re heading direc
