The first Venusian ship to reach Earth found a single isolated tribe of human beings roving the bushlands of a large island in the southern hemisphere. The Earthmen were without exception dark of skin and eye, and their hair, which was jet-black, was as kinky as koola wool. All were backward to the point of savagery, fleeing in superstitious terror before every attempt at communication. Val Conna and his crew—nine tall young men, fair-skinned and lordly and alike enough to have been brothers—mad