Wind

Venus is not kind to outsiders. Its winds tear across the landscape with a fury that has killed many, and its settlements are scattered dots of stubborn humanity against an alien atmosphere. When a boy in the remote mining town of Rathole contracts the deadly Venus Shadow, someone must get him to the spaceport before the weekly spacecraft departs. That someone is Jan van Artevelde, a Dutchman whose stubbornness has become the stuff of legend on a planet where legend is cheap. He makes the journey through treacherous terrain only to discover the flying platform has no fuel and the settlement has no medicine. With a dying child, an empty tank, and a deadline measured in hours, Jan must do what he has always done: refuse to accept defeat. What follows is a feat of improvisation that would be impossible if it weren't so damned clever, as a man who cannot fly decides to let Venus itself carry him home. Part survival thriller, part love letter to human stubbornness, this is science fiction at its most immediate and humane.