The safe return to Earth of the famous explorer Roger Clementine was heralded as an astounding, almost inconceivable feat of enduring human achievement, one that promised to instill a sense of wonderment and inspiration to the generations to follow. However, Roger's voyage also brought chaos and calamity to the Earth, and so it seems appropriate that it buoyed the best of man's spirit, so that men might challenge the worst of the universes' offspring in the years to come.

Major Clementine, of the royal navy, stood with a small gathering of his superiors and fellow officers on the sparsely grassed side of an unassuming Scottish mountain. Each man pulled his coat tightly around his own body to fend off the sharp and gusting wind, save for Admiral Clark, to whom all the others paid their attention. He stood with his chest pressed forward while his coat tails flapped about, one hand on his hip while the other gesticulated in time with his enthusiastic speech.

"My friends, I thank you for your presence here today. I understand that many of you have come a long way to be here on my request." He began.

Roger's gaze drifted in his disinterest from the face of the bellowing Admiral down to the ground; a rather short distance for a man of such high importance, and then longingly off to the south. The horizon was a blur of low clouds, but with a squint of his eyes, Roger imagined that he could peer right through them and around the curve of the Earth, to Cardiff, and home.

The Admiral went on. "The year is eighteen ninety-nine. The present century is waning, and with it, the British empire. The remaining North American colonies have been absorbed into the dominion of Canada, the southern colonies of Australia and New Zealand are becoming self governed and I fear soon they shall pursue independence. The loss of India and South Africa were a bitter blow. This empire needs something, some great act, to prove its supremacy over the world. Gentlemen, here it is."

The admiral extended his arm out behind him, palm up, so that he appeared to hold the mountain's peak in his hand. For several anxious moments, the men assembled before him peered at the distant peak as nothing happened. Then, a thick fog appeared near the top, bubbling slowly, rolling downhill. The small audience began to murmur. The fog grew thicker, and began boiling out in increasing volumes. In seconds it was spewing up into the air, no longer having the time to cool and descend the mountain, and the thick white billows rose ever higher and grew exponentially faster, until a literal jet of steam was shooting hundreds of yards into the sky with a roar that had begun as a dull hiss and was now rising to a thundering crescendo that shook the entire mountain.

Just as several of the men in the audience were exchanging frightened looks that suggested a fear of the very mountain they stood on being torn to pieces, a black *something* flew from the top of the mountain upon the torrent of steam with a speed that seemed unfathomable. The long, cigar-shaped object soared into the sky at a speed far beyond that of the highest caliber rifle bullet, and was out of sight before any of the observers could utter a sound. The auditory delay of distance now brought to the mens ears the thunderous crack of the item's discharge that made several of the men duck from fear and cup their hands over their ears. The torrential column of steam began to subside quickly, boiling down, thinning out and soon, disappearing completely.

"Incredible!" Somebody breathed. All of the spectators were gazing skyward, where the black cylinder had gone, but it was long since out of sight.

"My friends, this is the Lux Orbis project." The Admiral went on after a considerable pause. "With this machine, most of which is hidden within the mountain, we will launch men, officers of the Royal defense force, into the sky, beyond the atmosphere, and into a trajectory that will send them to distant Venus. It has long been assumed that Venus is inhabited, perhaps by intelligent men like us. We wish to extend to them the olive branch, and perhaps gain an ally. If indeed the planet is uninhabited by intelligent men, then a fine new colony of the British empire it will make, an achievement that no other nation shall surpass in our lifetimes."

"Our first foray is to be one of reconnaissance and observation, to determine just what sort of planet lies beneath those white clouds. For this task, we must choose a brave soul to pilot the craft."

At this, Roger looked up. It was as if everything had become very quiet all at once. A bold thought had just come to him, and he immediately knew he had to be the man to fly the spacecraft. Strong words came to him across space and time. 'You never take anything seriously. You'll never do anything worthwhile in your silly little life.' They were the last words he'd heard from his adoptive grandfather before he died in Roger's youth. Then, a decade later, strikingly similar words had come from the lips of his wife-to-be, as she climbed into a street-cab with her frowning father, and the cab crackled off down the street, taking her out of his life forever.

'Admiral Clark, sir.' Roger began, drawing the attention of the other officers. 'I'd like to volunteer to pilot the Lux Orbis.'

The admiral smiled broadly. "I'd hoped one of you men would ask. The country needs patriots, willing to lay down their lives if necessary, in pursuit of grand dreams. Of course, there is a selection process, and you will have great competition, but I'm sure you will do finely, Major."

Roger's mission, as was laid out to him, was to journey a million miles sunward, documenting his travels, and make an approach on the Earth's planetary neighbor, Venus. He would guide the craft down into the cloudy atmosphere, collecting photographs and atmospheric samples, and if all went accordingly, the craft would skip off the heavy lower atmosphere and back out into space, on a course for home. It sounded simple in concept. The sleek, pill-shaped spacecraft was little larger than a railway locomotive, cylindrical in shape, with a coating of black ceramic tiles to protect the steel beneath from the extreme temperatures it was likely to face. At launch, the craft was linked with a long steel tank beneath it, filled with two hundred tonnes of water, and loaded into the barrel of a colossal gun. The gun barrel was constructed in a vertical shaft that extended for three miles into the Earth, and on completion, would extend another half a mile above the surrounding hillside. The end of the barrel was sealed with a dome of steel, and the inside of the tube was evacuated of all its air to minimize frictional resistance. Thousands of coils of refined pitchblende metal sat glowing red in the chamber at the lowest end of the tube, and the tank of water beneath the Lux Orbis sat on top of these. The radioactive coils heated the water slowly, and the high pressure inside the tank prevented steam from forming, even long after the water had reached it's boiling point. When the temperature of the water was just right, pressurized ducts in the side of the mountain pumped tonnes of seawater into the tube, which vaporized upon contact with the pitchblende coils, and the resulting steam cloud expanded rapidly up the gun barrel, pushing the Lux Orbis before it.





The aethernaut Clementine was the sole crew member of the Lux Orbis, whose mission was to journey a million miles sunward, documenting his travels, dip tentatively into the cloud tops of the planet Venus, and use the planet's gravity well to slingshot back to Earth. Drawn on a chalkboard, the feat seemed as easy and smooth as the stroke of a pen weaving between the two titan celestial bodies. The simple, sleek, pill-shaped craft was little larger than a railway locomotive, although it had no wheels or engine. Prior to launch, it's smooth, round hull was loaded into the barrel of a colossal gun, constructed in a vertical shaft that stretched for miles down beneath the surface of the Earth, and then extended another mile above it.

The end of the gun was sealed with a dome of sturdy glass, and the barrel itself was evacuated of all it's air to reduce frictional resistance. Thousands of small coils of refined pitchblende metal sat glowing red at the chamber's base, and a block of carbide weighing many hundreds of tonnes sat between it and the aether craft, to dampen the shock and shield it's occupant from deadly gamma radiation. At the right moment, twenty thousand tonnes of seawater was applied to the pitchblende coils via pressurized ducts. The steam and associated pressure produced immediately began to force Lux Orbis and it's payload skyward at colossal acceleration.

The great glass dome at the barrels tip remained as the only barrier to the heavens, and as the aether craft approached to within microseconds of impact, explosive charges embedded in the glass detonated, the dome exploded outwards, and Lux Orbis and it's payload sailed into the night sky unharmed, followed immediately by the carbide buffer, and then by the white cone of steam as the gun barrel vented into the atmosphere. The fantastic speed and inertia of the aether craft kept it roaring skyward, despite the thinning air that now tore at it's hull, and very soon it was free from the pull of the Earth, and amongst the billion stars of the milky way.

After a month of eating tinned beans and Spam, and drinking filtered 'fluids', the wry, yet cheerful Major wrote that he was glad to see Venus approaching so close. By now he could see, without the aid of his telescope, the white wisps of clouds as they encircled the planet, and the dark patches of unknown origin that traversed the planet's surface in unpredictable ways beneath. The planet Venus was, to his eyes, the same diameter in the night sky as the full moon when seen from Earth at perigee.

Two days and nights saw the Major checking and rechecking his calculations meticulously. There would be but one chance to get his approach right. Too little thrust, and he would sail on past the planet, and disappear into the endless black of the aether. Too much, and he would tear through the Venusian atmosphere at meteoric speeds, and then, very abruptly, stop.

With methodical precision, Clementine adjusted his little on board pitchblende boiler to a tenth of a degree, aimed the outer vents towards the right stars, and flooded the boiler with water. Pressure increased, and a precision mechanism far more reliable than a human hand allowed small spurts of steam to vent from the aether craft, nudging it coaxingly into a slightly different trajectory. Shrouded in it's milky white mist, Venus approached.

Most men would barely have been able to maintain their composure with such a daunting event looming so near, but with the incursion into Venusian skies still some hours off, and Major Clementine being a man of science, with hardly room in his mind for a pinch of panic, he left the mechanical calculators to their calculating, and laid down to sleep. He wanted his wits to be at their sharpest, as he would need to take hundreds of photographs and monitor more than a dozen sensor gauges and processors in his Aethercraft for the mission to bear fruit.

Without needing an alarm, the major woke again one hour before first contact, and spent it making his final preparations. Then he settled down in his awkward shaped surveyors chair, and peered through the single crystal window at the nose of the craft. Thick milky clouds like wads of off-colored cotton filled his view. It pulsated and rolled beneath him like a thick, violent sea, which extended off into the horizon in every direction. He saw a slight bulge of cloud in the distance, and the aethercraft was heading right for it.

Already, the upper atmosphere of the planet was tugging and jolting the craft violently, and as the bulge drew close, major Clementine gripped the armrests of his chair tightly. Lux Orbis, in it's nose-down position, struck the cloud bulge broadside, and the hull boomed like a drum. The ashen-colored carbide coating of the craft began to crackle and pop with the heat of the impact, and one of the gauges before the major sprung swiftly to the red end of the scale. The temperature of the carbide shell was rapidly approaching it's melting point.

Major Clementine continued to work the shutter on his camera as swiftly as ever, only briefly checking the temperature guages. If the carbide shell ablated, and exposed the copper beneath, he would be gone in a brilliant green flash. However, this did not frighten or trouble him, for there was nothing to worry over. He'd done what he could, and could do no more. If he was destined to die here in the cloudtops of Venus, there was no force or being in the universe that could save him, and so, he accepted it calmly, and carried on taking photographs and marking down the levels on the gauges.

The thunderous tumult of gas passing by him continually grew louder, and the exterior temperature crept higher still, until it was straining against it's limiting pin. He eyed it again, and just as he did, it dropped immediately back to the white, and registered zero. Common sense told him that the danger was not passed, the temperature monitoring apparatus had merely vaporized in the heat.

Presently he began to notice a rapid tapping sound on the hull of his craft. Light at first, now it had begun to get louder, until he could hear perhaps a dozen separate thumps each second. With a tight grin, he found himself picturing the time he had absent-mindedly driven his motor car through a flock of lethargic gulls at the seaside. The shiny Ford had taken a horrendous beating, but many of the gulls fared much worse. Of course there were no gulls on Venus, and he concluded that the metal hull was just expanding unevenly, causing the dull thuds.

The Major barely noticed the passage of time, as he was so deeply immersed in his critical research, and only became aware of his increasing altitude as the roaring outside grew softer, and the clouds beneath him grew thinner and more well defined. He had made it through the gauntlet of deadly scorching gasses, and begun his ascent. Firing off the last three photographs his camera was capable of, he stowed it carefully in it's case, and began to configure his calculators to apply the correct thrust to send him back to Earth.

His foray into the Venusian atmosphere had been so short lived that he had not had time to observe the planet with his own eyes. In any case, any object of interest visible to him would have passed by too fleetingly to see, so he had simply aimed his camera into the mist and pressed the shutter button as rapidly as he could. When he returned to Earth, trained scientists would scour the data he'd collected and form them into a coherent result, but until then, he would not even know what kind of images he had captured. Now all that was left to do was pass the time until he returned home. He took a small white package from his food storage locker and began peeling the wax from it. Underneath was a crispy red apple, sterilized and preserved from rot with powerful gamma rays, which he had been saving to celebrate his victory. And with a proud grin, he bit into it victoriously.

The days and weeks blended together into a kind of twilight blur as Lux Orbis sailed back to the Earth. The aethercraft was in constant sunlight, and so there was no real sense of day or night, and Major Clementine found himself going to sleep only when exhaustion called for it, and woke when he could no longer stay asleep. Eventually, the pinpoint of light that was the Earth began to grow notably larger, and the day of his splashdown was upon him. Much like his dangerous jaunt into the cloudtops of Venus, Clementine spent may hours meticulously calibrating his approach. There was one element of his return however, that he could not have calculated for. All the cameras on the Lux Orbis were directed away from the craft, and so Clementine could not have known about the unwanted passengers which clung to the tiny pitted craters in the hull.