"The Venus Trap (Perry Rhodan No. 17)" by Kurt Mahr, translated by
Wendayne Ackerman
https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Trap-Perry-Rhodan-No/dp/1441659870/

Book number seventeen of a series of one hundred and twenty-six space
opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets,
number in the thousands. The English books started with two translated
German stories per book and transitioned to one story per book with the
sixth book. The German books were written from 1961 to present time,
having sold two billion copies and even recently been rebooted. I read
the well printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1972 that I had
to be very careful with due to age. My copy is a second edition from
1974. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two
ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I lost my original Perry
Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989. In fact, I now own book #1 to book
#101.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

BTW, this is actually book number 24 of the German Pamphlets. There is
a very good explanation of the plot in German on this website of all of
the PR books. There is automatic Google translation available for
English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, French, and Portuguese.
https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Im_Dschungel_der_Urwelt

In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow
astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in 1971. The
first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third stages were
nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio
interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an
aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of 500.

Perry Rhodan and Thora are crashed on Venus near the locked down old
Arkonide base. One of them has to get to the base in order to unlock it
and remove the planetary shield. Even Reginald Bell's teleporters in
orbit cannot get through the shield. And Thora has been captured by the
Eastern Block survivors.

BTW, this book was written right before we found out that Venus is 900+
F hothouse. So the authors of the day treated Venus as a jungle planet
with max temperatures of 120 F in the five day "day" and 80 F in the
five day "night". People do not need spacesuits but some of Rhodan's
people have armored suits. Oh yeah, very large saurians (ground and
flying) and several hundred foot long carnivorous worms. This Venus
saga is four books long and ends with #17. In fact, the Venus of PR is
almost Robert Heinlein's Venus of "Between Planets" and "Podkayne of
Mars". Too bad, that Venus was freaking awesome. And Podkayne of Mars
was released in 1962, the same time as PR.

One has to remember that this book was written in German in 1962 and
translated to English in 1972. Many items that came about in the 1970s
and beyond such as cell phones are not reflected in the book. However,
commercial aircraft commonly traveling at Mach 3 are not available to
the public as talked about in the book. Niels Bohr's saying "Prediction
is very difficult, especially about the future" comes to mind.

Two observations:
1. The publisher should have put two to four of the translated stories
in each book. Having two stories in the first five books worked out
well. Just having one story in the book is too short and would never
allow the translated books to catch up to the German originals.
2. Anyone liking Perry Rhodan and wanting a more up to date story should
read the totally awesome "Mutineer's Moon" Dahak series of three books
by David Weber.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 reviews)

Lynn