Publisher's Synopsis
This is an interesting piece that seems to have been written before Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adebert Kline wrote their famous Venus series. This is a trip to Venus on a craft that can travel a tremendous speed and is powered by something that sounds possibly nuclear. Another interesting thing, since this is written after H. Rider Haggard's She, is that the main female character is described as having a presence that reminds me of Ayesha from She. And though she is not quite as dangerous as Ayesha, Edmunds fixation on Ala and the wonders of Venus might lead the expedition into danger. Edmund has come up with a process that taps what he calls inter-atomic energy and he applies it to a special car shaped like a boiler, that he has created to take him into space. In a fit of anger at their remarks about his work he takes his friends with him without their consent. It takes about two weeks to get to Venus and there's some neat calculations behind it all though the ship itself has some potential design flaws. Because of the peculiar rotational aspects of Venus Edmund chooses to land on the darker side where he figures there should be no one living, since it would be too cold. But they find a race of somewhat intelligent ape like hominids whom Edmund is able to communicate with through Telepathy. Because of dense atmosphere speech on the planet is amplified and though the beings do speak, they only do so on rare occasions. Learning about these creatures or people, creates some tension; but the real adventure comes when they traverse to the warmer sunny side of Venus. On the warmer side there are more human-like hominids who...........
