 Why did Ben fear the Venusians?
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, Martians or Venusians. Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO 2 -breathing Venusians, the first he'd ever seen. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey —the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone above him through Luna City's transparent dome. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. They don't want new men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. Or— There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. So , Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth. After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? Ben Curtis made it to Venus. So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
 He had heard they were telepaths.
 They stood eerily motionless.  He had heard they were telepaths.  They stood silent and unblinking in a eerie manner.  They were large and scaly and resembled toads.