Outer Space #22

Two Martian explorers, Bendar and Torgu, embark on humanity's first voyage to Venus—with a 20,000-xadore wager riding on whether the planet harbors life—while unbeknownst to them, Venus itself teeters on the brink of war between two superpowers. As the ship approaches the cloud-shrouded world, the fate of the wager and the destiny of an entire civilization hang in the balance.

When a cosmic cloud threatens the great civilization of Goba with unbearable heat and starvation, the brilliant scientist Valdar devises an audacious plan: transport his entire population across space to a primitive planet where he can use his technology to freeze them in suspended animation until their world becomes habitable again. What Valdar doesn't anticipate is how long those eons of ice will truly last, or what will become of the world that holds his frozen people in its grip.

A ventriloquist and his dummy Waldo audition their act at a booking agency, only to have the agent dismiss them like countless other performers—until a surprising revelation about who's really in control changes everything.

Martin Hayward and his wife Carla have built a lucrative lecture circuit on tales of a trip to Venus—until two mysterious visitors reveal themselves as actual Venusians and insist on taking the fraudulent couple on a real journey to prove their claims. What begins as a scheme to fleece gullible audiences becomes an unexpected voyage that forces Martin and Carla to confront the line between deception and truth, with ironic consequences waiting back on Earth.