Together, the Earthman and the Jovian
outfought and outwitted the prison guards,
the Venusian jungle-hell, the cunning Chameleon
men. Together, they were invincible. But at
the Test for the Pearl they divided....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Far off in the steaming Venusian jungle, a band of the Chameleon men
halted, lifting their mottled faces in the direction of the sound.
Closer in, a four-man jungle patrol of Earthmen broke as one man into a
run along the trail, their swift-moving bodies swishing the clouds into
ragged streamers.
At the edge of the viscous river circling the island an armed guard
slipped on his infra-red glasses and began searching his area
carefully, his special light traveling slowly along the river and its
near and opposite banks.
On the island, only a few yards from the high, thick walls of the
Interplanetary Prison, a patch of ground, approximately eight feet by
five quivered once--and was still.
The deep-throated roar of the escape siren was thunderous. It carried
for scores of miles through the steamy atmosphere of the planet,
alerting both natives and Earthman patrols to a successful break from
that most fabulous of prisons--The Hole.
Behind the oxygen mask he wore, lying under a foot of the thick spongy
soil of the planet, Jarl Gare wiggled his itching body and chuckled.
He nudged Waltk, the huge Jovian who lay beside him. "Don't get
restless, now," he mumbled through the mask. "We have hours to wait.
And somebody might spot this patch of ground if you keep wriggling."
The Jovian grunted, wriggled again, and then was quiet.
"Men have escaped from The Hole before," Jarl Gare muttered, "but they
were always caught before they got to the pearl-beds. Waltk's body and
my brain will get us through."
He envisioned one of the huge Venusian pearls--so rare and so precious
on Earth that it could buy a man's freedom, even from a murder charge.
Jarl Gare fell asleep, dreaming of a bauble as big as his head.
* * * * *