With the ship's robot, Omega, German astronaut Brinkman pilots a one-man landing craft through the Venusian atmosphere. On the surface, he comes upon an industrial complex and finds small information storage devices that look like insects. Brinkman's landing craft is destroyed in an explosion when it accidentally lands on high-tension power lines. The rest of the crew lands the "Cosmostrator" to investigate the explosion. The Crew splits up, some staying near the "Cosmostrator" to study the storage devices. The others follow the power line to try and find the Venusians, but they find no life forms. Instead, they discover a large golf ball-like structure that Arsenew suggests may be a giant transformer or a force-field generator. Following the power lines in the other direction, they find the remains of a deserted and blasted city centered around a huge crater. There are clear signs of a catastrophic explosion so intense that the shadowy forms of the humanoid Venusians are permanently burned onto the walls of the surviving structures (like the cast shadows left behind after the Hiroshima atomic bombing).