 What made the narrator's mission so difficult?
Perhaps there was method in Colonel Walsh's madness—murder-madness—when he ordered Major Polk to scan the planet for a guy named Joe. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1952. For example, he could have chosen a Second Looie for the job on Venus. "It will be a simple assignment, Major," he said to me, peering over his fingers. It had been going on for six months now and we'd lost at least a thousand men from Space II. His features, his muscles, everything seemed to have been stretched like a rubber band. "You've got the wrong number," he said, and I was a little surprised at his use of Terran idiom.
 The inhabitants of Venus were all very much the same.
 No one cooperated with the narrator to help him find the right Joe.  He became incapacitated by the hot weather on Venus.  He became physically lost on Venus.  The inhabitants of Venus were all very much the same.