In a crystalline death lay the only
release for those prisoners of that
Ionian hell-outpost. Yet MacVickers
and the men had to escape--for to
remain meant the conquering of the
Solar System by the inhuman Europans.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
MacVickers 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 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 MacVickers 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. MacVickers looked at it. He licked
dry lips, and his grey-green eyes, narrow and hot in his gaunt dark
face, flashed a desperate look at the small flyer from which he had
just been taken.
It bobbed on the heaving mud, mocking him. The eight-foot Europan guard
standing between it and MacVickers made a slow weaving motion with his
tentacles.
MacVickers studied the Europan 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.
MacVickers bared white, uneven teeth. His big bony fists clenched. He
took one step toward the Europan.
A tentacle flicked out, daintily, and touched the silver collar at the
Earthman's throat. Raw electric current, generated in the Europan'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.
[Illustration: _The tentacle reached out again, with swift exquisite
skill. Raw agony filling his body, MacVickers retched and fell
backward._]
MacVickers retched 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.
* * * * *
MacVickers dropped into a circular room thirty feet across, floored and
walled with metal and badly lighted. The roof was of thick glassite
plates. Through them, very clearly, MacVickers could see four Europan
guards, watching.
"They're always there," said the Venusian softly. "You'll come to love
them, stranger."
There were men standing around the ladder 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, MacVickers shivered. His nostrils wrinkled.
There was fear in the room. The smell of it, the shudder of it in the
air. Fear that was familiar and accustomed, 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 MacVickers.
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.
The Venusian said sharply, "Tough luck, MacVickers. 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. Loris drew a little closer, and one of the Earthmen
in the group came toward him.
"I'm Pendleton," he said. "The _Starfish_. Remember?"
MacVickers 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 wryly. He was English, the ravaged ghost of the big,
ruddy, jovial spaceman MacVickers remembered.
"Quite a change, eh? Well, perhaps we're lucky, MacVickers. We shan't
have to see the smash."