"Where the Changed Ones Go"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1966
ID: 1277
Publication history:
- 1966: Galaxy February 1966, Magazine
- 1967: To Open the Sky, Ballantine Mass market paperback, 222 pp.
- 1970: To Open the Sky, Ballantine Mass market paperback, ISBN 345-02025-1, 222 pp.
- 1984: To Open the Sky, Bantam Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-553-24502-3, 222 pp.
- 1989: To Open the Sky, Sphere Mass market paperback, ISBN 0722178271, 208 pp.
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
Part three of To Open the Sky.
Since it is impossible for a human to survive on Venus without maintaining a presurized environment, the colonists of Venus have altered themselves to suit the planet. The manipulations are genetic, so succeeding generations are born to live on the hostile world. (The Jim Burns cover art gives you an idea: blue skin and pseudo-gills.) After decades of failure to convert the inhabitants of Earth's colonies on Mars and Venus, the Vorster church sends yet another missionary/martyr to Venus in 2135. He is surprised to find a thriving mission of the heretic sect of Transcendent Harmony, which is nearly dead on the home world. And the Venusians have other changes less obvious than those to their bodies.