In the Walls of Eryx

The story, written in first-person narrative, describes an incident in which a prospector, working on the planet Venus for a mining company, becomes trapped in an invisible maze.

He is equipped with a breathing apparatus fueled by oxygen cubes (as Venus' atmosphere cannot sustain human life) and has a leather protective suit, as well as a "flame pistol" to use against man-lizards.

While on a routine mission the narrator encounters a mysterious, invisible building, inside of which is the body of a dead prospector who is clutching an unusually large crystal.

The story seems to suggest that the structure of the maze is actually changing its form as the narrator struggles to find his way out, meaning that despite all his efforts, there is never any possibility that he will escape.

The narrator's testimony, along with his body, are soon recovered by a search party, who discover an additional exit just behind the ground where Stanfield died, which the prospector missed when attempting to map out the maze.

However, his dying pleas for humanity to leave Venus alone are dismissed by his employers as unfortunate dementia caused by his desperate situation, and instead the crystal mining company decides to use draconian measures to annihilate the man-lizards completely.

Unlike the actual planet, Lovecraft's Venus has a tropical climate and is filled with lush, swampy jungles, though its atmosphere is poisonous to humans, while at the same time not so dangerous as to require hermetically sealed space suits.

[3] Guimont and Smith have noted the parallel similarities to Venus as depicted in Lovecraft's story and two other works, Robert A. Heinlein's "Logic of Empire" (1941) and C. S. Lewis' Perelandra (1943).