High in the Clouds of Venus
Sheridan handed his message to the Rheingold’s heliograph operator, who took the stack of pages with a blank politeness which barely hid his dismay at so very long a message.
“Sorry,” Sheridan said. He causally dropped a few coins on the desk beside the fair-haired young man, who at once looked more cheerful. “It’s rather long, I admit. Hope you won’t be at it all night or anything.”
“No problem, Herr Sheridan,” said the operator as he glanced through the pages. “It will take me some time, however. I shall inform the captain we must stay aloft for perhaps…” he glanced at a chronometer hanging on the wall of the tiny heliograph cabin, “…perhaps two hours. If you will return to the lounge, please, I will let you know when I am done.”
Sheridan strolled back towards the lounge. He would have liked to watch the boy transmit his message, but he knew that Kurt would not allow it. He also knew it wouldn’t take nearly two hours to transmit even twice as long a message as he had requested to send.
No doubt Kurt wanted to read it first. Good luck to him, he thought in satisfaction. The code he’d worked out before he left Earth would not be easy to break. The message looked like a simple report of the things he’d seen and done over the last week or so, and in it he praised the German settlements lavishly.
Actually, once decoded, the message held inside it some bits of information Sheridan was sure his superiors would find interesting, including:
Germans state they have found vast supply of varenien, though information unproven. Lizard-men held in slavery in German territories. Major posts and airships heavily armed. Suspect plans for acquisition of entire planet.
Yes, thought Sheridan, I’m sure they’re going to eat up that information back home. He lit a cigar as he entered the saloon lounge and hid a smile when he noticed Kurt was not there.
Tomorrow was shaping up to be an interesting day. Varenien or not, he was going to set down in a lizard-man village controlled by the Germans for the first time.
He settled into a comfortable armchair and took out his notebook.