(Acting on a sudden whim, they’ve gone off to spend the afternoon on the planet Venus. It’s turning out to be harder work than they anticipated. The air is hot and misty and the sweat is pouring off both their foreheads as they hack their way through the thick, tropical rainforest which covers most of the planet’s surface. All around them long vines stretch down from the branches of enormous trees, lush mosses and ferns cover every inch of ground and strange alien noises cry out from the dark, ominous depths of the jungle.)

“I can’t help thinking that this is all a bit anachronistic.” (says the one with the dark hair. He’s stopped for a rest and is looking thoughtfully at the forest all around them.)

“What do you mean?” (says the short one, wearily)

“This place. I mean, this vision of Venus as some sort of pre-historic version of Earth with, like, carboniferous jungles and weird dinosaurs and what have you…it’s the sort of thing you get in 1940’s Science Fiction. It’s not like the real Venus at all.”

“How should it be, exactly?”

“Well, ever since the late 60’s there’s been a good understanding that the climate of Venus is completely different to ours. The surface temperature is many hundred degrees centrigade and the atmosphere is all carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid. There’s no liquid water at all. No liquid anything really. Down on the surface here we should be stuck in the middle of a hellish storm of superheated gases. We’d be dry fried in a second, dude!”

“Right. And you’d rather we were walking about in that would you?” (says the short one, hacking his way through a particularly intransigent piece of vine.)

“No, of course not. I’m just saying, is all…”

(They carry on working their way through the jungle, stopping every now and then to take a drink and admire their surroundings. The one with the dark hair scans the treetops, trying to catch a glimpse of the strange, six-legged monkeys which have been following their progress. The short one bends down to inspect a bright coloured orchid growing by his feet only to jump back startled when it blinks an eye at him and scuttles away on 8, leaf-like limbs.)

“‘Course, the other thing about the portrayal of Venus in popular fiction is its association with the Roman God of, you know, love and fertility and …sex and stuff.”

(The short one stops for a moment to think about this.)

“Is that you’re way of saying that this place we’re walking through is some kind of weird manifestation of the suppressed erotic fantasies of an SF hack writer from the 40’s?”

“I rather fear it is. I suggest we proceed with extreme caution.”

“Agreed.”

(They continue their trek, carefully picking their way through the forest back towards the place they left their spacecraft. All of a sudden they emerge stumbling into an open clearing and come face to face with a tribe of seven foot tall Venusian warrior women – all of them sporting radiant blonde hair, golden armoured breast plates and cavernous cleavage)

“Welcome, Earthmen!” (says the lead warrior woman) “Welcome to our palace of carnal delights! Come join my sisters and I and help begin the reproduction of our once glorious race!”

“Oh, crikey!” (says the one with the dark hair, recoiling in terror. He turns to his companion to look for support but the short one has already beat a hasty retreat leaving nothing behind him but a rustling of bushes and an echoing cry of panic).