Gare worked one hand up through the spongy earth, poked a hole in it
and wiped the mud from his mask's eye-piece.
"Right," he muttered. "It's time to go." He worked his head out of the
ground and looked about.
There could be infra-red spotlights covering the very ground under
which they lay. But they would have to take the chance.
His body made a sucking sound as he drew himself from the self-dug
grave. He reached back in and tapped Waltk. The big Jovian virtually
erupted from the ground, the weight nothing to his mighty thews.
Carefully they replaced the spongy earth. Then, with Jarl Gare in the
lead, the pair walked upright, but quietly, to the great power-charged
fence.
It went up twenty feet and down the same distance underground--Jarl
Gare had learned this depth from a prisoner who had tried to dig his
way out but failed and nearly drowned as liquid seeped into the hole he
was digging.
The big Jovian, his thick-thewed body glimmering with sweat in the
ground light, bent to pick up Jarl Gare's slight naked body.
"Wait," Jarl Gare warned. "We must wait until one of the river beasts
start plunging."
The Jovian grunted. He waited, flexing the great shoulder and back
muscles. Then he said suddenly, "I smell guards."
Jarl Gare's thin face jerked up at the seven foot figure of his
companion. "Where?" he asked tensely.
The Jovian with a quick movement shoved Jarl Gare to the ground,
dropped flat swiftly himself and wriggled away through the short grass.
Jarl Gare waited quietly. The big Jovian whose eyes, trained on his
homeworld of darkness, penetrated the steamy fog of Venus almost as
well as an infra-red lamp, would take care of the guards his nostrils
had scented.
That was the way Jarl Gare had planned it. Waltk's strength, nearly a
dozen times greater than that of an Earthling, his hearing developed
to a tremendous acuity by the environment of his homeworld, and his
eyesight were the tools of Jarl's brain.
If Waltk had had Jarl's brain, he could have won a Venusian pearl, but,
while Nature had given him a marvelous machine for survival, she had
only given him just enough brain to keep it operating.
His work would be done when they reached the Venusian pearl-beds. One
glance at the bulky figure and the Venusians would know the weakness.
But it did not matter if he lost. Jarl Gare would still win a pearl.
_I have no weakness_, Jarl grinned to himself, _except pride and
the Venusians seek out physical or mental weakness--not a character
weakness._ He remembered the oft-told tale of the Earthman whom the
Venusians had frightened to death, but that was because he showed that
fear physically.
Three years in The Hole and you either go raving mad or learn to mask
every emotion.