"To begin with, I think we'll land on that big snow-dome yonder, and do a little exploring.

Where there are snow and clouds there is moisture, and where there is moisture a man ought to be able to breathe." [Illustration: _Snow peaks and cloud seas._] The _Astronef_, still falling, but now easily under the command of the helmsman, shot forwards and downwards towards a vast dome of snow which, rising some two thousand feet above the cloud-sea, shone with dazzling brilliance in the light of the rising Sun.

She landed just above the edge of the clouds.

Meanwhile they had put on their breathing-suits, and Redgrave had seen that the air chamber through which they had to pass from their own little world into the new ones that they visited was in working order.

When the outer door was opened and the ladder lowered he stood aside, as he had done on the Moon, and Zaidie's was the first human foot which made an imprint on the virgin snows of Venus.
The first thing Redgrave did was to raise the visor of his helmet and taste the air of the new world.