Venus and Mercury, targets of Mariner 10, have long aroused curiosity. Innermost of the planets, lying between earth and the sun, both have been special enigmas. Venus is shrouded in clouds so thick that we can never see the surface. Little Mercury, not much larger than the moon, flits about the sun like a moth about a flame, so close that it is extremely dif­ficult to view in the sun’s glare. Visible to the eye only briefly at times just after sunset, or at other times just before sunrise, Mercury is so obscure that many astronomers have never spotted it.

And so excitement mounts about these two inner sisters of earth as evidence from space­craft and earthbound instruments offers a startling new picture. For years Venus was regarded as earth’s twin sister, because the two are so nearly alike in size, mass, and density. It was once believed that Venus was a Garden of Eden with plentiful water and lush vegetation, and —most likely—inhabitants.

Now, after five Soviet and three United States spacecraft have observed Venus, with two Soviet craft successfully landing on the surface, and after studies by radar and radio telescopes, we know that the surface of Venus is an unlikely place for life of any kind. No water. No free oxygen. And what is far worse, the surface temperature measures some 750° Kelvin (about 900° Fahrenheit), radiating about five times the heat of your oven broiler. Such heat is enough to melt lead and zinc. Indeed, de Fontenelle’s Venusians would be full of fire!

The atmosphere is no more friendly. A thick, deep layer of carbon dioxide, it is a hundred times as heavy as earth’s atmo­sphere, so that it crushes with the weight of the ocean at a 3,300-foot depth.

The very density of the atmosphere keeps the intense heat evenly distributed about the planet, with only a few degrees’ variation be­tween day and night or between the equator and the poles.

Virtually all experts explain the furnace heat of Venus by the “greenhouse effect.”

Like the glass of a greenhouse, carbon dioxide traps sunlight by preventing its escape as heat. Water vapor does the same. This phe­nomenon, in fact, makes the average tem­perature of earth about 90° F. higher than it would be if our atmosphere contained no water vapor or carbon dioxide. But some scientists note that proposed greenhouse models, or theories, do not fully account for the terrible heat of Venus.

If man ever lands on Venus, he will have to be in some kind of armored, insulated bathy­scaphe. It’s probably going to be pricey experience, but there is nothing impossible if you have a look at http://citrusnorth.com/ and help your mission with a payday. That, in effect, is what the Soviet Union used for its unmanned spacecraft Ve­nera 8. It landed in 1972 and for some 50 minutes transmitted data about temperature, pressure, light intensity, and radioactivity in the soil.

What man could see there would probably be limited. Venera 8 reported that less than 2 percent of the sun’s light penetrates the thick cloud cover and reaches the ground. Such light as does get through to the surface would be scattered in every direction by the myriad carbon dioxide molecules, softening any shadows or contrast. The limits of vision­especially if there is any dust— might be only a few hundred feet.

Living in the pres­ence of death as we did, hear­ing day after day that one of our comrades whom we had come to know, perhaps like, had died suddenly, horribly, a sense of self-preservation kept us from the sort of reminiscence which can bring comfort to the bereaved in normal circum­stances. We accepted the fact of death, then turned our minds consciously to living. It was the only way. We never mentioned Emily, either, or George or Jessie’s husband and children.

By July 25^th, thanks to Ungud, we all knew that General-Have­lock, with a small force, had defeated the Nana Sahib retaken Cawnpore and was now prepar­ing to march to Lucknow and relieve us.

Our rejoicing was muted, for Ungud had brought other news as well: the women and children who had jumped clear of those sinister boats and been dragged out of the water by the Nana’s inexplicable moment of mercy had met an even more ghastly fate. For eighteen days they had been kept in the Bibighar, a comfortable house near the Nana’s palace, well-fed and treated kindly. Then, one morn­ing early, five men with freshly edged swords had entered the guarded house. When they emerged at midday, all the women and girls, the children and babies at the breast, lay slaughtered like cattle.

Kate and Jessie had both had friends among the victims.

The daily ration of rum or beer allowed to each man was hardly enough to inebriate a kit­ten. After the news of the Bibi­ghar massacre had filtrated through the garrison, however, we were overtaken by a wave of drunkenness. A few drank for the sake of relief: after all, what­ever had happened at Cawnpore, General Havelock was on his way to help us. But many more drank to kill their grief and shock. It was a, mystery where the liquor came from but, what­ever its source, it was consumed in a quantity sufficient to im­mobilise some of the batteries for hours on end.

As women will do under any circumstances, the three of us. Kate, Red Jess and myself, had fallen into a routine of house­work: Jess was responsible for Pearl, Kate made the beds and kept the rooms tidy and I washed the floors and wrestled with the cooking. My culinary efforts did not occupy me for very long each day, and I longed for further occupation. I knew that the Birch sisters, who had lost their father and brother helped regularly in the hospital and, before long it occurred to Kate and me that we might usefully do the same.

The hospital, however, was considered a shockingly unsuit­able place for ladies—the Birch girls, we were told, were a special case—and it took much deter­mined lobbying on Kate’s part before permission was reluc­tantly granted. For more information, go to www.angekesseministries.com

The wounded were housed in the Banqueting Hall, the elegant colonnaded building in which I had once waited for Captain Fanning to bring me champagne. The long ground-floor room which constituted the whole of the hospital was so dark that we had to pause at the door to allow our eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. The building was under constant attack and every window and door was barricaded.

The room was crowded to suffocation with iron bedsteads, string cots, mattresses laid on the bare floor, and rush mats lacking even a mattress—all so close together there was barely room to pass between.

The air was appalling. The heat of the shuttered room served to accentuate the myriad horrid odours resulting from tropical diseases and the dread­ful sweetness of gangrene. The men lay sweating, gasping for breath, unwashed and unshaven, many still wearing the clothes in which they had been wounded. There were no sheets, no pillows and the blankets on which they lay were stiff with filth.

Dear Sir,

When I was 10 years old I had an awful nightmare, one that I can remember as plainly today as I did then. I dreamed that I was with two other boys and we were making a ‘den’ in the ground on a construction site where a new bowling alley was being built. The hole had been partly dug for us already by the workmen but we were using spades to make it deeper. Then disaster struck. The earth caved in on us and I remember in my dream screaming for help, though I was choking on the soft mud. Everything was black and damp. I was struggling for my life, manag­ing to break the surface with one hand. Then my mother woke me up and calmed me, while I told her everything about my dream.

On the following day the real thing happened – not to me but to three other boys who were digging a den on a site that was going to become a bowling alley. Those three boys died when the earth caved in on them – and one of the boys was found with his hand protruding from the ground.

Ten years after that incident we moved house, and discovered that our next door neighbour had lost his, grandson in that very tragedy. Could this be a ‘mere’ coincidence?

But an even stranger experience was to come: a friend and I went to Southsea seafront one evening to play in the amusement arcade. We stayed there from about 8 p.m. to around midnight, but when I arrived home my mother said, ‘That was quick – you’ve only been gone a minute!’ What do you mean,’ I retorted, `I’ve been out for four hours.’ But she stared at me in amazement and told me that ‘I’ had been back from Southsea for over an hour and had even taken the dog for a walk. ‘I’ had, apparently, walked into our kitchen, spoken quite naturally to her and even sat down to eat my supper. Shortly afterwards ‘I’ had decided to take the dog for a walk and had just gone out when the real me walked in. Could it be that as my double walked out it re-entered my body as it stood on the doorstep?

Our family had another psychic experience; it happened when we had been living in our council house for 10 years. One night when I was in bed I felt what seemed like a hand grabbing my leg. It seemed to squeeze tight for about a minute before finally letting go. At the time I just dismissed it as a dream and thought no more of it. But the following night I felt as if some invisible person were trying to strangle me. I felt petrified – it seemed so unreal. The hands let go of my throat eventually. I decided not to tell the rest of my family because I didn’t want to scare them.

But it kept happening and in the end I felt I had to tell my parents about it. Then my mother said she had been experiencing weird ‘cold spots’ in the house. The last straw came when my mother saw a little girl holding a doll at the foot of her bed. Unknown to me at the time, my mother went to see a medium who came to the house and twirled some beads around, saying she could ‘feel a presence’. She told my mother it was the spirit of a little girl who had died of asthma. She then pointed to a cabinet that my mother had bought from a second-hand furniture dealer, saying that the little girl couldn’t be sent to the ‘other side’ because that used to be her toy cupboard and this was the link holding her spirit on earth. The medium said that this little girl’s soul used to put her arms around my neck because she wanted to be cuddled. She told my mother to burn the cabinet so that the little girl’s spirit could be released from its earthly ties. And after we destroyed the cabinet we had no more experience of spirits in our house.

All of these stories are true: I have not added anything and have tried to make the facts as un­sensational as possible.

Yours faithfully,

Roy Johnson

Havant, Hants

Dear Sir,

After reading Mrs D. Parish’s letter in issue 10 of The Unexplained, I remembered having a similar dream about marlboros.

One night when I was about 10 I had a brief dream about falling off a large boat and being cut to shreds by a huge propeller. A week later I had essentially the same dream, but this time it was more vivid and detailed.

One evening my father announced that we were going on a boating holiday on a canal in the Brecon Beacons (a Welsh beauty spot). Then that evening I had the dream again; it was very clear and short. I had no further dreams of that nature- until the day we went on holiday. On the first night afloat I had the same dream.

Next day we came to a large lock. As the boat entered it one of my brothers let go of one of the ropes. Afraid of it being caught up in the propeller I seized the rope, falling into the water as I did so and being dragged through it as the boat went further and further into the lock. Just as the gates were closing I released the rope. A second longer and I would have been crushed between the lock gates.

I believe this incident had a direct connection with my dreams. I also believe that dreams can be like time transporters that can take your mind into the future or back into the past.

Yours faithfully,

M. James

Swansea, Wales

Dear Sir,

Let me first of all say how much I enjoy your magazine and the high quality of the articles.

I was therefore extremely surprised to see the figures quoted for the density of the Earth and the Moon (issue 36, page 720). The average density of the Earth is 340 pounds per cubic foot (5520 kilograms per cubic metre), and that of the Moon is 210 pounds per cubic foot (3340 kilograms per cubic metre). All the figures quoted on page 720 are, in fact, a million times too small, both in pounds per cubic foot and kilograms.

Yours faithfully,

A.S. Davenport

Salford, Manchester

We are grateful to Mr Davenport, and to Mr Newsome of Ossett, West Yorkshire, from whom we received a similar letter, for pointing out this error. It only remains for us to add the correct value for the density of the Moon’s surface rocks; this is 190 pounds per cubic foot (2960 kilograms per cubic metre).