OUTPOST ON I O by Leigh Brackett

Good evening and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod through Ling's Night Gallery, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White. What can happen to human beings when trust is wiped out by suspicion and culture casts? Chris Stashue small boy incased in the Crystal Ball, and I'm father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares joined us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at weird Ingwaymedia dot com doesn't remotely belong to me.

I have no proprietary interest in that at all. Weird weirding Way Media presents Astounding of the Public Public below with outpost on io by Lee Bracket mc vickers. Stopped at the brink of the dark round shaft. It was cold and he was stark naked except for the silver collar welded around his neck. But it was much more than cold that made him shiver and clamp his long bony jaw.

He didn't know what the shaft was for or where it led, but he had a sudden feeling that once he went down, he was down for good. The small round metal platform rocked uneasily under his feet. Beyond the railing, as far as mc vickers could see, to the short curve of Io's horizon, there was mud, thin, slimy, blue green mud. The shaft went down under the mud. Mc vickers looked at it.

He licked dry lips, and his gray green eyes, narrow and hot in his gaunt dark face, flashed a desperate look at the small flier from which he had just been taken. It bobbed on the heaving mud, mocking him. The eight foot European guard standing between it and mc vickars made a slow weaving motion with his tentacles. Mc Vickers studied the European with the hating eyes of a wolf in a trap. His smooth black body had a dull sheen of red under the Jupiter light.

There was no back nor front to him, no face, only the four long rubbery legs, the roundish body, and the tentacles in a waving crown above. Mc Vickers bared white, uneven teeth, his big bony fists clenched. He took one step toward the European. A tentacle flicked out daintily and touched the silver collar at the earthman's throat. Straw electric current generated in the European's body struck into him, a shuddering, blinding agony surging down his spine.

He stumbled backward and his foot went off into emptiness. He twisted blindly, catching the opposite side of the shaft, and hung there, groping with his foot for the ladder rungs, cursing in a harsh, toneless voice. The tentacle struck out again, with swift, exquisite skill, three times like a red hot lash across his face, and twice harder across his hands. Then it touched the collar again. Mc Vickers wretched and let go.

He fell jarringly down the ladder. Managed to break his fall onto the metal floor below, and crouched there, sick and furious and afraid. The hatch cover clanged down over him like the falling hammer of doom. Mc Vickers dropped into a circular room thirty feet across, floored and walled with metal and badly lighted. The roof was of thick glass.

Sight plates through them very clearly, mc vickers could see four European guards watching. They're always there, said the Venusian softly. You'll come to love them, stranger. There were men standing around the latter foot, thirteen of them with the Venusian earthmen, Martians, Venusians, pale, stark, naked, smeared with a blue green stain. Their muscles stood out sharp on their gaunt bodies, their silver collars a mocking note of richness.

Deep deep inside himself, mcvickers shivered, his nostrils wrinkled. There was fear in the room, the smell of it, the shutter of it in the air, fear that was familiar in accustom, lying in uneasy sleep but ready to awake. There were other men, four or five of them, back in the shadows by the wall bunks. They didn't speak nor come out. He took a deep breath and said steadily, I'm Chris McVicker's deep space trader, out of Terra.

They caught me trying to get through the asteroid lines. Their eyes glistened at him, looking from him to something behind them that he couldn't see. They were waiting, and there was something ghoulish in it. Tough luck McVicker's I'm Loris, late of the Venusian Guard. Introduce yourselves, boys, They did, in jerky detached voices, their eyes sliding from him to the hidden something.

Laurs drew a little closer, and one of the earthmen in the group came toward him. On Pendleton, he said, the starfish Memma. Mc vickers stared at him, the furrows deepened in his craggy face. He said, my God, very softly, and not as a curse. Pendleton.

The man grinned Riley. He was English, the ravage ghost of the big, ruddy, jovial spaceman. Mc vickers remembered, quiet change. Eh, well, perhaps we're lucky mc vickers. We shall have to see the smash.

McVicker's head dropped forward. Then you saw it coming to Lauris made a little bitter laugh that was almost a sob all. The desperate, boyish humor was gone from his face, leaving it old and grim. Who hasn't I've been here, God knows an eternity. But even before my ship was taken.

We knew it. We can't build spaceships as fast as that Jovium destroys them when they through the asteroid line. Pendleton's quiet voice was grave. Mars is old and tied and torn with famine. Venus is young, but a courage is undisciplined.

Her barbarians aren't suited to mechanize warfare and earth. Perhaps if we hadn't thought so much amongst ourselves, mc vickers said harshly, it wouldn't make much difference. When a man has a weapon that causes metal to explode its atoms, It doesn't make any difference when you stack up against him. He shook his craggy head impatiently. What is this place?

What are you doing here? The Jovis just brought me here and dumped me in without a word of explanation. Pendleton shrugged way too. There's a pit below full of machinery. We work it, but we're not told why.

Of course, we do a lot on guessing. Kissing. The word rose sharp on the thick hot air. A man burst out of the group and stood swaying with a restless motion of the floor. He was a swart low Canal Martian.

His yellow cat eyes glittered in his hatched face, and his thin ropey muscles twitched. I'll tell you what this place is, earth man. It's a hell, and we're caught in it, trapped for the rest of our lives. He turned on Pendleton. It's your fault.

We were in a neutral plot. We might have been safe, but you had to get back Janu. Pendleton's voice cracked like a whip. The Martian went silent, watching him. There was more than hayde in his yellow eyes, Dando the beginning of the trap madness.

Mc vickers had seen it in men who couldn't stand the confinement of a deep space voyage. The Englishman said quietly, Johannu was my glory, old foreman. He rather holds us against me. The Martian snarled, and then coughed. The cough became a paroxysm.

He stumbled away, gray faced and twitching, bent almost double. It's the heat, said Laurs, and the damp, poor devil. Mc vickers thought of the air of Mars, cold and dry and pure. The floor rocked under him, eyes with the queer waiting shine to them, slid furtively to the hidden thing behind the standing men the hot, wet air lay on his lungs. He sweated.

There was a stir of nausea in him, and the light swirled. He shut his jaw hard. He said, what did Janoman? The rest of our natural lives. Let us go in the war's over, there's anything left to go to.

There was a tight, little silence, and then from the shadows against the wall, there came a brittle, whispering laugh. The war, they let us go. Before that the group parted. Mc vickers had a brief glimpse of a huge man crouched in a strange position on the floor. Then he couldn't see anything but the shape that came slowly out into the light.

It moved with a stiff, tottering gait, and its naked feet made a dry clicking sound on the metal floor. Mc Vicker's hand closed hard on the ladder behind him. It had been a man, an earth man. His body was still tall, his features still fine, but there was a film over him, a pale green sheath that glistened dully. He thrust out an arm with a hand on it, like a hand carved inaquamarine watch it, he whispered.

Mc Vickers touched it, It was quite hard and warm, only with the heat of the air. Mc Vickers's gray green eyes met the sunken, sheathed eyes of the earthmen. His body hurt with the effort to control it. When we could no longer move, the whispering voice said, they take us up the shaft and throw us over into the mud. That's why you're here, because we were one man short.

Mc vickers put his hand back on the ladder rung. How long about three earth months? He looked at the blue green stain that smeared them all the color of the mud. His hands sweated on the ladder rung. What is it?

Something in the mud? A radioactivity? I think it seems to turn the carbon in human flesh to a crystalline form. You become a living jewel. It's painless, but it's He didn't finish.

Beads of sweat stood on McVicker's forehead. The men standing watching him smiled a little. There was motion behind them. Laurus and Pendleton stiffened, and their eyes met. Mc vickers said steadily, I don't understand the MUD's outside.

Lauras said, with a queer, hurried urgency. You will. It's almost time for the other shift. He broke off. Men scattered, suddenly crouching back in a rough circle, grinning with feral nervousness.

The room was suddenly quiet. The crouching man had risen. He stood with his huge corded legs wide apart, swaying with the swaying of the floor. His round head sunk between ridges of muscle, studying the earth man. Out of pale, flat eyes.

Laurs put his old, bitter boy's face close to McVicker's. His whisper was almost inaudible. Bea dick, he's boss here, he's mad, don't fight him. McVicker's gray green eyes narrowed. He didn't move.

Barrick breathed in slow, deep sighs. He was a Venusian, a coal swamper. From his size and pallor, and the filthy white hair clubbed in his neck. He shimmered very faintly in the dim light. The first jewel crust was forming across his skin, knife sharp and startling across the silence.

A round hatch cover and the floor clashed open. The sweat broke cold on mc vicker's men began to come out of the hole, just at the edge of vision. Naked, dirty men with silver collars. They had been talking, cursing, jostling. The first one saw Birick and stopped, and the silence trickled back down the shaft.

It was utterly quiet again, except for the harsh straining of lungs against the hot, wet air and the soft sounds of naked men climbing the ladder. The cords ridged on McVicker's jaw. He shifted his balance slightly away from the ladder. He could see the faces thrust forward in the dim light, eager, waiting, shining eyes, shining teeth, cheekbones shining with sweat, frightened, suffering men watching another man fear and suffer, and being glad about it. Birick moved forward slowly.

His eyes held a pale, glitter like distant ice, and his lips smiled. I prayed, he said softly. I was answered, you new man, Get down on your belly. Lauras grinned at Beirick, but there was no humor in his eyes. He had drawn a little away from mc vickers.

He said, carelessly, there's no time for that now, Beireck. It's our shift. They'll be burning us if we don't go, Beirick repeated, down on your belly, not looking at Laura's. A vein began to throb on mc vickers's forehead. He looked slight, almost small against the Venusian's huge bulk.

He said quietly, I'm not looking for trouble. Then get down, sorry, said mc vickers, Not today. Pendleton's voice cracked out sharply. Let them alone, Beireck, you man dwn the ladder. They're going for the shockers.

Nick Vickers was aware of movement overhead. Beyond the glass roof. Men began to drop, slowly, reluctantly down the ladder. There was sweat on Pendleton's forehead, and Lauras's face was as gray as his eyes. Breck said hoarsely, down Grave, then you can go.

No, the ladder was beyond Birick. There was no way past him. Lauras said, in a swift heart whisper, Get down, Mcvickers, for God's sie, get down and then come on. Mc vickers shook his head stubbornly. The giant smiled.

There was something horribly wrong about that smile. It was the smile of a man in agony, when he feels the anesthetic taking hold peaceful and happy. He struck out, startlingly fast for such a big man. Mc Vickers shrank aside. The fist grazed past his head, tearing his ear.

He crouched and went in, trying for a fast body blow and the sidestep he'd forgotten the glimmering sheath. His fist struck Birick on the mark, and it was like striking glass that didn't shatter. The pain shot up his arm, numbing, slowing, sickening. Blood spattered out from his knuckles. Beireck's right swept in across the side of his head.

Mc Vickers went down on his right side, Down, he said. Mc Vickers twisted under the foot, snarling. He brought up his own feet viciously with all his strength. The pain of impact made him whimper, but Beireck staggered back, thrown off balance. There was no sign of hurt in his face.

He stood there, looking down at mc vicker's. Suddenly, shockingly, he was crying. He made no sound, he didn't move, but the tears ran out of his eyes. A deep, slow shudder shook mc vicker's He said, softly, there's no pain, is there? Berick didn't speak the tears glistened over the faint hard film on his cheeks.

Mc vickers got up slowly. The furrows were deep and harsh in his face, and his lips were white. Laurs pulled at him. Somewhere. Pendleton's voice was yelling, Hurray, hurray, please.

The guards were doing something. Overhead. There was a faint crackling sound, a flicker of sparks in a circle around the top of the wall. Shivering, tingling pains swept through mc vicker's from the silver collar at his throat. Men began to whisper in curse.

Laurs clawed at him, shumped him down. The ladder picked his face to make him hurry. The pain abated. Mc Vickers looked up. The great corded legs of Berick were coming down, the soles of the feet making a faint, hard sound on the rung.

The hatch closed. Overhead, the voice of the dying Earthmen came dry and soft over his shoulder. Here's were your work until you die. How do you like it? Mc vicker's turned scowling.

It was hot. The room above was cool. By comparison, the air was thick and sluggish, with the reek of heated oil and metal. It was a big space running clear to the curving wall, but the effect was of stifling, cramped confinement. Machinery crammed the place, roaring and hissing and clattering, running in a circuit from huge intake pumps through meaningless bulking shapes to a forced air outlet with oil pumps between them.

The pumps brought mud into a broad sluice, and the blue green stain of it was everywhere. There were two glassite control boxes high on the walls, each with a black tentacled European. About five feet overhead was a system of metal catwalks, giving complete coverage of the floor area. There were Europeans on the walks too, eight of them, patrolling steadily. Their sleek, featureless bodies were safe from contact with the mud.

They carried heavy plastic tubes and their tentacles, and they were heavy duty shockers mounted at every intersection. Mc Vickers grinned dourly, trustful, lot very Pendleton nudged him over toward a drive motor attached to some kind of centrifugal separator. Lauris and the blue sheathed Earthman followed, with Beerrick coming slowly behind him. Mc vickers said, what's all this? Four?

Pendleton shook his head. We don't know, but we have an idea that jovium comes from the mud. We're not sure, of course, but look here, what was that suggest to you? Jovium? Mc Vicker's gray green eyes began to grow hot, the stuff that's went in the war for them, the metal destroyer.

We're not sure, of course. Pendleton's infinitely weary eyes turned across the stretch of greasy metal deck to the end of the circuit. Look, eh, what was that suggest to you? The huge pipe of the forced air ejector ran along the deck behind a screen of heavy metal mesh just above it and closed behind three thicknesses of glassyde was a duct leading upward the from the inordinate size of its supports, and its color was pure lead lead lead pipe lead armor radiations that changed living men into half living diamonds. Nobody knew what jovium was or where it came from.

Only it did, but scientists on the three besieged worlds thought it was probably an isotope of some powerful radioactive metal, perhaps uranium, capable of setting up a violent, progressive breakdown in metallic atoms. If, said mc vickers softly. The pipe were lined with plastic blue mud. I've traded through these moons. The only other deposit of that mud is a saucepan fall on J eleven.

This must be their only source. Laura's shoved an oil can at him. What difference does it make, he said, savagely. Mc vickers took the can without seeing it. They stored up there then, in the space between the inner wall and the outer If somebody could get up there and set the stuff off, Pendleton's mouth twisted.

Can you see anyway? He looked, Guards and shockers, charged ladders and metal screens, no weapons, no place to conceal them anyway, he said doggedly. But if someone could escape and get word back, this contraption is a potential bomb, big enough to blow io out of space. The experts think it only takes a fraction of a gram of the pure stuff to power a disintegrator shell. There was a pulse beating hard under his jaw, and his gray green eyes were bright.

Lauris said Escape. He said it as though it were the most infinitely beautiful word in existence, and as though it burned his mouth. Escape, whispered the man with the shimmering, deadly sheath of aquamarine. There is no escape but this, McVicker said into the silence that followed. I'm going to try one thing or another.

I'm going to try. Pendleton's incredibly tired eyes looked at the livid burns on McVicker's face. It's been trying and it's no use. Barrick moved suddenly out of his queer dazed stillness. He looked up and made a hoarse sound in his throat.

Nick Vickers caught a flicker of motion overhead, but he didn't pay attention to it. He went on speaking quietly in a flat level voice. There's a war on. We're all in it, soldiers, civilians and kings, the big fellas and the little ones. When I got my master's ticket, they told me a man's duty wasn't done until the ship was cradled or he was dead.

My ship's gone, but I haven't died yet. Pendleton's broad gone shoulders drooped. He turned his head away. Loris's face was a death mask carved from gray bone. He said, almost inaudibly, shut up, damn you shut up.

The movement was closer overhead, ominously close, the men scattered across the pit had stopped working, watching mc vickers with glistening, burning eyes across hot oil filmed metal. Mc Vickers said harshly, I know what's wrong with you. You were broken before you came, thinking the smash was coming, and it was no use. Pendleton whispered, you don't know the things they do to you. Stiff and dry.

Out of the earthman's aquamarine mask came the words you'll learn. There's no help mcvickers. And the men have all they can bear without pine. If you bring them more suffering mcvickers, they'll kill you. Heat oil and reeking metal and white stiff faces filmed with sweat, eyes shining hot and glittering with fear, rocking floor and sucking pumps, and a clutching nausea in his belly.

Barrick, standing straight and still watching him, watching everybody watching mc Vickers put his hand flat on the engine housing beside him. There's more to it than duty, he said softly, and smiled without humor, the vertical lines deep in his cheeks. His gaunt Celtic head had a grim beauty. I'm Christopher Rory mcvickers. I'm the most important thing in the universe, and if I have to give my life, it'll not be without return on the value of it.

Janue, the Martian away on the other side of the pit, made a shrill, wailing cry. Laurus and Pendleton flinched away like dogs afraid of the whip. Looking upward, Vickers glimpsed a dark, tentacled shape on the catwalk above, just before the shattering electricity coursed through him. He screamed once, and then Beirick moved. He struck Laurus in Pendleton and the blue sheathed Dirrithman out of the way like children.

His left leg took mcpickers behind the knees, and the same instant that his right hand pushed mcpicker's face. Mcvickers fell heavily on his back, screaming at the contact of the metal floor. Then Bierrick sprawled over him, shielding his body with the bulk of his own. The awful, shocking pain was lessened. Lying there, looking up into Birick's pale eyes, mc Vickers made his twitching lips say why, Beirick smiled.

The current doesn't hurt much anymore, and I want you for myself to break mcpickers drew a deep, shuddering breadth and smiled back the lines deep in his lean cheeks. He had no clear memories of that shift, heat and motion and strangling air, and Janu coughing with a terrible steady rhythm, his own hands trying to guide the oil can. Toward the end of the time, he fainted, and it was Birick who carried him up the ladder. He had no way of knowing how long after that he came too. There was no time in that little hell.

The first thing he noticed, with the hair triggered senses of a man trained to ships, that the motion of the room was different. He sat up straight on the bunk where Birick had laid him. The tidal wave, he said, over a quick stab of fear. What we ride it out? Said Laurs bitterly.

We always have. Nick Vickers knew the Jovian moons pretty well, remembering the tremendous tides and winds caused by the gravitational pull of Jupiter. He shuddered. There was no solid earth on Io, nothing but mud and the extraction plant. From the feel of it was a hollow bell sunk under it perfectly free.

It had to be free. No mooring cable could stand the pull of a Jupiter tide. One thing about it, said Pendleton, with quiet viciousness. Amongst the bloody Jovi's sea sick Janu the Martian made a cracked, harsh laugh. So they keep a weak current on us all the time.

His hatchet face was drawn, his yellow cat eyes lambented in the deep light. The men sprawled on their bunks, not talking much. Beerrick said, on the end of his watching mc vickers with his pale still eyes, there was a tightness in the room. It was coming. They were going to break him.

Now. Before he heard them break him or kill him, mc Vickers wiped the sweat from his face and said, I'm thirsty. Pendleton pointed to a thing like a horse trough against the bulkhead. His eyes were tired and very sad. Loris was scowling at his stained and faintly filmed feet.

There wasn't much water in the trough. What there was was brackish and greasy. Mc Vickers drank to splash him his face and body. He saw that he was already stained with the mud. It wouldn't wash off the dying earthmen whispered, there's food also.

Mcvickers looked at the basket of spongy synthetic food and shook his head. The floor dipped and swung. There was a frightening, playful violence about it, like the first soft taps of a tiger's paw. Loris looked up at the glass roof with the black shapes beyond. They get the pure air, he said, I'll ventilated pipes are only a few inches wide.

Lest we crawl up through them, Pendleton said, rather loudly. The swan breathed through this skin. You now all the sense Organs sight an erring. Shut up, snarled Johnnu. Stop talking for time.

The sprawled men on the bunks drew themselves slowly, tight, breathing hard and deep in anticipation, and Beirick rose. Mcvickers faced them, Brick and the rest. There was no lift in his heart. He was cold and sodden, like a shoot at ox. Watching the pole axe fall, he said, with a bitter, savage quiet.

You're a lot of bloody cowards, you Brick. You're scared of the death creeping over you, and the only way you can forget the fear is to make someone else suffer. It's the same with all of you. You have to trample me down to your own level, break me for the sake of your souls as much as your bodies. He looked at the numbers of them, at Breck's huge, impervious bulk, at his great fists.

He touched his silver collar, remembering the agony of the shock through it. And I will break you, know that, damn you. He gave back three paces and set his feet. All right, come on, Barrick, let's get it over with. The Venusian came toward him across the heaving floor.

Lauras still looked at his feet, and Pendleton's eyes were agonized. Mcvickers wiped his hand across his buttocks. The palms were filmed and slick with oil from the can he had handled. There was no use to fight. Berick was twice his size, and he couldn't be heard anyway.

The diamond sheath even screened off the worst of the electric current. Being a non conductor, that gave the dying men an advantage. But even if they had spirit enough left by that time to try anything, the hatches were still locked tight by air pressure and the sheer numbers of their suffering mates would pull them down. Also, the Jovis were as strong as four men. Nonconductor sheathed skin Berick's shoulders, tensing for the first blow, swept trying to break through the film of oil on his palms, the slippery feel of his hands as he clenched them.

Birick's fist lashed out. Mcvickers dodged under it, looking for an opening, dreading the useless agony of impact. The bell lurched wildly. A guard moved abruptly overhead. The motion caught McVicker's eye.

Something screamed sharply in his mind, Pendleton's voice saying, the swan breathed through this skinyon now all this sense Organs saw Anne heiring. He sensed rather than saw Birick's fist coming. He twisted enough to take the worst of it on his shoulder and knocked him halfway across the deck. And then the current came on. It was weak, but it made him jerk and twitch.

He scrambled up on the pitching deck and started to speak. Birick was coming again, leisurely smiling. Then quite suddenly the hatch cover clanged open, signaling the change of the shifts. McVicker stood still for a second. Then he laughed a queer little chuckle, and made a rush for the hatch.

He went down it with Rick's hand brushing past his head. Men yelled and cursed. He trampled on them ruthlessly. The ones lower down fell off the ladder to avoid his feet. There was a clamor up above.

Hands grabbed at him. He lashed out, kicking and butting. His rush carried him through and out across the pit, toward the space between the end points of the horseshoe circuit. He slowed down. Then.

The guards had noticed the scuffle, but it seemed to be only the shift changing, and mcpickers looked like a man going peacefully for oil, peacefully. The blood thundered in his head. He was cold, and the skin of his back crawled. Men shoved and swore back by the ladder. He went on, not too fast, fighting the electric shiver in his brain.

Fuel and lubricating oils were brought up, presumably from tanks in a still lower level, by big pressure pumps. All three sets of pumps in tank, outlet and oil worked off the same compressed air unit. He set the lubricating oil pump going and rattled cans into place. The men of his shift were straggled out from the ladder, twitching from the light current, scared, angry but uncertain. There was a subtle change in the attitude of the European guards.

Their movements were sluggish, faintly, uncertain. Mcpickers grinned viciously, seasick. They'd be sicker. They didn't get to him too soon. The surging pitch of the bell was getting worse.

The tide was rising, and the mud was playing with the bell like a child throwing a ball. Nausea began to clutch at mcpicker's stomach. The pressure gage on the pump was rising. He let it rise, praying, his gray green eyes hot and bright. Going with the motion of the deck, he sprawled over against the intake pumps.

He spun the wheel on the pressure control as far as it would go. A light wrench changed so that it could not be thrown, lay at his feet. He picked it up his handed, jerking and tingling, and began to work at the airpike. Coupling hands gripped his shoulders, suddenly slewing him around. The yellow eyes of Janu, the Martian glared into his doing.

Here earth man, this is my station. Then he saw the pressure gage. He let out a keening whale, cut short by the crunch of McVicker's fist on his mouth. Mcvickers whirled and swung the wrench. The loose coupling gaze.

Air burst whistling from the pipe, and the rhythm of the pumps began to break. But Jano's cry had done it. Men were pelting toward him, and the guards were closing in overhead. Mcvickers flung himself bodily on the short hose of the oil pump. Birick, Laura's Pendleton, the dying Earthman, the hard faces behind them.

The guards were manning the shockers up in the control boxes. Black tentacles were flashing across banks of switches. He had to work fast before they cut the pressure. Birick was ahead of the others, very close. Mcvickers gave him the oil steam full in the face.

It blinded. Then the nearest shocker came on, focused expertly on mcviickers. He shut his teeth hard, whimpering through them, and turned the hard forced steam of oil into of the hoarsely shrieking blast from the open pipe. Oil sprayed up in heavy, blinding fog. Burning shuddering agony shook mcvickers, but he held his hose, his feet braced wide, praying to stand up long enough.

The catwalks were hidden in the oily mist. The ventilating blowers caught it, thrusting it across the whole space. Mc Vickers yelled through it, his voice hardly recognizable as human. You out there, all of you, this is your chance? Are you going to take it?

Something fell close by with a heavy thrashing thud, something black and tentacled and writhing, covered with a dull film. Nick Vickers laughed, and the laughter was less human than the voice. Cowards. All right, I'll do it myself, somebody yelled, they're dying. Look.

There was another heavy thud. The hot, strangling fog roiled with hidden motion. Mc Vickers gasped and wretched and shuddered helplessly. He was going to drop the hose in a minute, going to fall down and scream. If they stepped the power up one more notch, he was going to fall down and die.

Only they were dying too, And forgetting about power. It seemed a stenic eternity to mc vickers, but it had all happened in the space of a dozen heartbeats. There were yells and shouts and a sort of animal tumult in the thick haze. Suddenly Pendleton's voice rang out of it. Mc vickers, I'm with you, man, You others listen, He's given us the break we needed.

Don't let him down. And Janos screamed, no, he's killed the gods, but there are more. Dey'll fry us from the control boxes if we held him. The pressure was dropping in the pipe as the power cut out. There was a last hiss, a spurt of oily spray, then silence.

Mc Vickers dropped the hose. Johannu's voice went on, sharp and harsh with fear the fry us. I tell you we'll lie here and kill and scream until we're crazy. I'm going to die, I know it. But I won't go through that for nothing.

I'm going back and pray they won't notice me. More sounds, more tumult. Men suddenly torn between hope and abject terror, mc vickers said wearily into the fog. If you help me, we can win the war for our worlds. Destroy this bell, Stop the jovium from working destroy io victory for us, and if you don't, I hope you fry here and inhale.

Afterward they wavered. Mc vickers could hear their painful breathing, ragged with the emotion in them. Some of them started toward the sound of Pendleton's voice. John wu made an eerie walling sound like a hurt cat, and went for him. Mc vickers started to help, but the current froze him to the metal floor.

He strained, feeling his nerves, his brain dissolving, and a shuddering fire. He knew why the others had broken so soon. The current did things to you inside. He couldn't see what was happening. The heavy mist choked his eyes, his throat, his nostrils.

The pitching of the bell was a nightmare thing men thrashed and struggled and cursed. So he had killed the guards. So what? There were still the control boxes. If they didn't rush them before the oil settled, they wouldn't have a chance.

Why not give up? Let himself dissolve into the blackness he was fighting off. A great pale shape came striding through the mistoward him. Birick, this was it? Then, well, he'd had his moment of fun.

His fists came up in a bland, instinctive gesture. Birick laughed. The current made him jerk only a little in his thin diamond sheath. He bunched his shoulders and reached out. Mc vickers felt himself ripped clear of the floor.

In a second, he was out of focus of the shocker and the pain was gone. He came nearest to fainting then, but Barrick's huge hand shook him by the hair, and Barrick's voice shouted, damn, little man, turn him. It's better to die quick now then go mad with fear. Come on, here's as to show with still men. Hurry up, you sons.

Mc vickers looked at the Venusian's face. The terrible, frozen fear was gone from his eyes. He wanted to die now, quickly, fighting for vengeance. The gray, pinched face of Laurus loomed abruptly out of the fog. It was suddenly young again, and the smile was genuine.

He said, let's teach him to mind, Beirick, mc vickers. I He shook his head, looking away. You know, I know, hurry up with it. Pendleton's voice burst out of the fog triumphantly. Janu crouched on the heaving deck, bleeding and whimpering.

Nick Vickers yelled, who's with me? We're gonna take the control boxes. Who wants to be a hero? Birick laughed and threw him bodily up onto the catwalk overhead. Most of the men came forward.

Then the three or four that were left looked at the Martian and followed. Birick helped them up onto the catwalk. They were moving now. It took only a few seconds. Mc vickers divided them into two groups.

You meant that are she go first to help block the charge. It'll be your job to take the Jovis out of the way quick before this fog settles enough so they can see a focus on us. They split up, running along the walk that connected with the control boxes, hurdling the bodies of Jovie and suffocated an oil. Presently, the glass site door loomed before them. Berrick and the dying Earthman led McVicker's party.

The Venusian wrenched open the door and mc vickers felt his heart stop. There were three Europeans instead of one. The guards had come down from a bog. Get them out here, he said, out into the oil. A wave of shuddering agony tossed through him.

The Jovis were using their powerful hand tubes. Only the glass syite walls partially protected them. The fog began to whip past him. He groaned, thinking it was going and then he put his head in his hands and wept with incredulous, thankful joy. The oily mist was being sucked into the box by powerful ventilators.

Mc vickers remembered Lauras saying, they get the pure air. I'll ventilator pipes are only a few inches wide, he laughed. The bell swooped sickeningly. Somewhere off in the fog. He heard screams and shouts, and Pendleton's voice roaring triumph.

He thought, we never could have done it at the tide I hadn't come in and made the Jovis sea sick. He laughed again. It tickled him that seasickness should lose a war. They went in and up the ladders into the sealed storage space next to the convict quarters. There was a huge cylinder of lead suspended over the mouth of the duct from the extractor.

They must collect the stuff when they bring oil in supplies, said Loris well, mcvickers, what happens to us now? Mcvickers looked at them, the lines deep in his face. We all agree, don't we, that there's no hope of escape. If we wait until the next supply ship comes and try to take it, we'd lose the chance of doing well. Call it our duty if you want to, that is to wreck their only source of the explosive that's winning the war for them.

I think you know what our chances of taking that ship would be. Without offensive weapons or protection against theirs. It would only mean a return to this slavery if they didn't kill us all outright, it comes down to this, Shall we turn this bell into a disintegrator bomb, setting the Jovian free to destroy its own and every other metallic atom in the mud. Or shall we gamble our worlds on a slim chance of saving our necks. Laurus looked down at the deck and said, softly, why should we worry about our necks?

Mc vickers, you've saved our souls? Agreed, then, all you men. Berick looked them over. The man who refuses, we'll have no neck to save. Mc Vickers turned to the leaden cylinder.

It was fixed to the duct by a plastic lined, lead sheathed collar. There was an arrangement whereby a plug it could be driven into the open mouth of the filled cylinder without spilling a grain of the stuff. Mc Vickers reached up and loosed the apparatus that held the cylinder upright. It fell over with a shattering crash. A palely glowing powder puffed out, settling over the adjacent metal.

Mcvickers had one second of terror. An eerie, bluish light grew, throwing faces into strong relief. Pendleton praying silently, Lauris smiling, the blue sheathed Earthman with closed eyes, his face a mask of peace. The others facing a death, They understood and welcomed, all of them, thinking of three little worlds that could go on living their own lives. Berrick grinned at him, I'm glad you ran away.

Mcvickers grinned back. This episode performed and produced by Father Malone. Music by hp be