Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding Stories,
June, 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Savagely cursing, Luke Fenton reeled backward from the porthole, his
great hairy paws clapped over his eyes. No one had warned him, and he
did not know that total blindness might result from gazing too earnestly
into the sun's unscreened flaming orb, especially with that body not
more than twenty million miles distant in space.
[Sidenote: Mighty Luke Fenton swaggers defiantly in Vulcan's Workshop,
most frightful of Martian prisons.]
He did not know, in fact, that the ethership was that close: Luke had
not the faintest notion of the vast distances of the universe or of the
absence of air in space which permitted the full intensity of the
dazzling rays to strike into his optics unfiltered save by the thick but
clear glass which covered the port. He knew only that the sun, evidently
very near, was many times its usual size and of infinitely greater
brilliance. And he was painfully aware of the fact that the
fantastically enlarged and blazing body had seared his eyeballs and
caused the floating black spots which now completely obscured his
vision.
Stumbling in his blindness, he fell across the hard cot that was the
sole article of furniture in the cell he had occupied for more than two
weeks. Lying there half dazed and with splitting head, he cursed the
guard who had opened the inner cover of the port; cursed anew the
fish-eyed Martian judge who had sentenced him to a term in Vulcan's
Workshop.
Several of Luke's thirty-eight years had been spent in jails and sundry
other penal institutions devised by Earthman and Martian for the
punishment of offenders against the laws of organized society. And yet
they had failed to break his defiant spirit or to convince him of the
infallibility of his creed that might makes right. Nor had they taken
from him the gorillalike strength that was in his broad squat body, the
magnificent brute lustihood that made him a terror to police and citizen
alike. Instead, the many periods of incarceration had only served to
increase his hatred of mankind and his contempt of the forces of law and
order. Especially was he contemptuous of the book-learning that gave the
authorities their power.
As the pain back of his eyes abated, Luke could see dimly the shaft of
light that slanted down from the porthole to the bare steel floor. His
sight was returning, yet he lay there still, growling in his throat, his
mind occupied with thoughts of his checkered past.
* * * * *
Steel-worker, mechanic, roustabout, he had worked in most of the
populous cities of Earth and had managed to get into serious trouble
wherever he went. It was his boast that he had never killed a man except
in fair fight. And yet, at thirty, finding himself wanted by the police
of a half dozen cities of Earth, he had signed up in the black gang of a
tramp ethership bound for Mars, knowing he would never return and caring
not at all.
At first, he had been riotously happy in the changed life on the new
world. There had been plenty of soul-satisfying brawls and plenty of
chulco, the fiery Martian distillate. On his many and frequent jobs
there were excellent opportunities to rebel against authority, and he
had fomented numerous mutinies in which he was always victorious but
which usually landed him in one of the malodorous Martian jails for a
more or less extended stay.
Then had come that final fracas in the Copau foundry on the bank of
Canal Pyramus. Overly optimistic, Luke's new boss had struck out at the
chunky, red-headed Earthman during an inconsequential argument and had
promptly measured his length in a sand pile as a hamlike fist crashed
home in return. They had picked up the foreman and taken him to the
infirmary where it was found that his skull was fractured and that he
had little chance for life. There were the red police after that, and
Luke, single-handed, trounced four of them so soundly and thoroughly
that someone sent in a riot call. It had taken a dozen of the reserves
to club him into submission at the last.
That was too much for Martian justice. In pronouncing sentence the judge
had termed Luke an incurably vicious character and a menace to society
such as the planet had never harbored. And Luke, his head swathed in
bandages from which his wiry red hair bristled like the comb of a
gamecock, had grinned evilly and snarled his defiance.
And so they were taking him to the dread prison camp known as Vulcan's
Workshop, a mysterious place of horror and hardship from which no
convict had ever returned. Vaguely Luke knew that it was located on
still another world, away off somewhere in the heavens. He had seen the
lips of men go white when they were condemned to its reputed torture,
had heard them plead for death in preference. Yet its terrors had not
awed him; they did not awe him now. He had beaten the law before; he'd
beat it again--even in Vulcan's Workshop.
* * * * *
A key rattled in the lock and Luke Fenton leaped to his feet, facing the
barred door with feet spread wide and with his massive shoulders hunched
expectantly. He could see now, with much blinking and watering of his
still aching eyes, and he looked out with sneering disapproval at the
three guards in the corridor. They were afraid of him, singly, these
Martian cops, even though armed with the deadly dart guns and with
shot-loaded billies. So afraid, Luke chuckled inwardly, that they had
kept him from the other prisoners throughout the trip, kept him in
solitary confinement.
The door was opening and it came to Luke that the ethership was
strangely and hollowly silent. The rocket tubes were stilled, that was
it, and even the motors that drove the great ventilating fans had been
stopped. They had arrived.
No time now to start anything. He would have to submit tamely to
whatever they might mete out to him in the way of punishment--until he
got the lay of the land. It would require some time to study things out
and to plan. But plan he would, and act; they'd never hold him here
until he died of whatever it was that killed men quickly in Vulcan's
Workshop. Not Luke Fenton.
Sullenly docile, he was prodded forward to the air-lock. A draft of hot
fetid air swept through the corridor, carrying with it the forewarning
of unspeakable things to come. And a shriek of mortal terror wafted in
from outside by the stinking breeze, told of some poor devil already
demoralized. The thick muscles of Luke's biceps tightened to hard knots
under his black prison jacket.
* * * * *
They were outside then and Luke essayed a deep breath, a breath that was
chokingly acrid in his throat.
"Waugh!" he coughed, and spat. One of the guards laughed.
Any foul epithet that might have formed on Fenton's lips was forgotten
in the sight that met his eyes. A barren and rugged terrain stretched
out from the landing stage, a land utterly desolate of vegetation and
incapable of supporting life. Pockmarked with craters and seamed with
yawning fissures from which dense vapors curled, it was seemingly devoid
of habitation. And the scene was visible only in the lurid half light of
flame-shot mists that hung low over all. In the all too near distance,
awesomely vast and ruddy columns of fire rose and fell with monotonous
regularity. For the first time, Luke experienced something of the
superstitious fear exhibited by even the most hardened criminals when
faced with a term at Vulcan's Workshop. That term, to them, meant horror
and misery, torture and swift death. And he, too, was ready to believe
it now.
He was prodded down an incline that led from the landing stage to the
rocks below. The guards from the ethership, he saw, remained behind on
the platform and there were new guards awaiting him below. Husky
fellows, these were, in strange bulky clothing and armed with the
highest powered dart guns. The other prisoners from the vessel were
already down there, a huddled and frightened mass--a squashed pile,
almost--silent now and watchful of their jailers.
* * * * *
"Come on, show some speed, tough guy!" a guard yelled from the foot of
the runway. "Think this is a reception?"
Another of the guards guffawed hoarsely, and Luke choked back the
blasting retort that rose in his throat. Plenty of time yet before he'd
be ready to make things hot for those birds.
The runway, he observed, was a strip of yielding metal that glowed
faintly with an unnatural greenish light. He was nearing its lower end
when the siren of the ethership shrieked and he heard the clang of the
outer door of its air-lock as it swung to its seat.
Then he stepped out to the smooth stone slab on which the nearest of the
guards was standing. Immediately it was as if a tremendous weight was
flung upon him, bearing him down until his knees buckled beneath him. He
was rooted to the spot by an enormous force which dragged at his vitals
and weighted his limbs to leaden uselessness. With a mighty effort he
raised his head to look up into the grinning yellow face of the guard,
and his thick neck muscles were taut gnarled ridges under the strain.
"Damn your hide!" he howled. "It's a trick. I'll break you in two for
this, you slob!"
His huge biceps tensed and his fists came up. But they came up slowly
and ineffectually, ponderous things he could scarcely lift. A great
roaring of rocket tubes was in his ears then, and the ethership screamed
off through the red mists while he dabbed futilely at the leering yellow
face. And vile curses rasped from between his set teeth at the laughter
of the guards.
* * * * *
Luke Fenton never had taken the trouble to learn or he would have known
something about this planet Vulcan on which he was a prisoner. As far
back as 1859, by Earth chronology, its existence within the orbit of
Mercury had been reported by one Lescarbault, a French physician. But
other astronomers had failed to confirm, in fact had ridiculed his
discovery, and it was not until some years after the establishing of
interplanetary travel in the first decade of the twenty-first century
that the body was definitely located.
Vulcan, the smallest and innermost of the planets, circles the sun with
great rapidity at a mean distance of twenty million miles. Its periods
of rotation and revolution are equal, so that it always presents the
same face toward the solar system's great center of heat and light--for
which reason one side is terrifically hot and the other, that facing
into outer space, unbearably cold.
There is no life native to the body, and mankind has found it possible
to exist only in the narrow belt immediately on the dark side of the
terminator, the line of demarcation between night and day. Here there
are the dense vapors, illuminated perpetually by refracted light from
the daylight side and by the internal fires of the planet itself, fires
which erupt at regular intervals through many fissures and craters. And
it is only under greatest hardship that man can exist even here, what
with the noxious gases and the extremes of heat and cold to which his
body it subjected. There is no natural source of water or of food, so
these essentials must of necessity be conveyed from Mars or Earth by
ethership.
In spite of all this, man has persisted in establishing himself in the
vapor belt of Vulcan for the sake of wresting from the rocky soil its
vast deposits of rare ores, and a great number of mining operations are
continually in progress. All of these are commercial projects and are
worked by adventurous seekers of fortune, save only the penal colony
known as Vulcan's Workshop: But no Terrestrial or Martian, however
greedy for riches, would dare to remain longer than two lunar months,
which is the average time limit of human endurance. Only the condemned
remain, and these remain to die.
* * * * *
Though hardly more than two hundred miles in diameter, Vulcan is
possessed of a surface gravity almost six times greater than that on
Earth. This is due to the planet's core of neutronium, the densest known
substance of the universe, a little understood concentration of matter
whose atoms comprise only nuclei from which all negative electrons have
been stripped by some stupendous cataclysm of nature.
And so it was that Luke Fenton, uninsulated from the tremendous gravity
pull when he stepped from the charged metal of the runway, was
struggling against his own bodily weight, suddenly increased to more
than twelve hundred pounds.
Doggedly, the Earthman pitted his mighty sinews against the force he
could not understand. Here was an intangible thing, yet it was a power
that challenged his own brute strength, and he exerted himself to the
limit in accepting the challenge. With legs spread wide and with sweat
oozing from every pore, he heaved himself erect, straightening knees and
spine and standing there firmly on his two feet.
"He's carrying it!" came the husky whisper of a guard. "This bird _is_
tough."
Craftily, Luke bared his white, even teeth in a good-humored grin. He
had seen what they were doing with the other prisoners, fitting them one
by one with the strange bulky breeches--garments that gave forth a faint
greenish glow like that of the runway. And each of the men, so attired,
was enabled somehow to get to his feet easily and walk about as if
unhampered by the force which had flattened him to the rocks and which
still held Luke's straining body in its grip.
* * * * *
The yellow-skinned guard, a Terrestrial of Asiatic origin, was solemnly
engaged now in lacing the slitted legs of a similar garment to Luke's
rigid nether limbs. Yet there was no cessation of that awful weight when
the thing was done. The guard stepped back and leered wickedly. He had
slung his dart gun over his shoulder and now produced a slender black
tube which he leveled at Luke's midsection.
"You walk now, Fenton," he snarled.
The Earthman rose upward as if he would leave the ground. Two or three
inches seemed added to his stature, and his muscles trembled from the
sudden release. He stepped a pace forward.
Then a light beam flashed forth from the black tube and Luke sagged down
with an astonished oath squeezed grunting from his throat. The swift
renewal of the inexplicable force had caught him off balance and he
dropped ignominiously to his knees.
"Ha!" gloated the Oriental. "It is thus we control the tough ones,
Fenton. I've given you a warning; now get up--and march!"
On the last word came blessed release and the return of Luke's strength.
He marched, meekly falling in with the file of new prisoners. He even
smiled through the red stubble of his beard. But black hatred was in his
heart, and renewed determination that he'd get away from this place
somehow--alive.
Time would show him the way.
* * * * *
Fenton's slow but retentive mind absorbed many things during the
succeeding few days. There was neither day nor night in this hellish
place--only the flame-lit mists; but they had clocks like those of
Earth, and you worked fourteen hours on the slope or in the smelter and
had the rest of each so-called day of twenty-four hours in which to eat
and sleep.
The food was coarse, but there was plenty of it. There was only water to
drink, lukewarm stinking stuff, doled out sparingly in rusty tin cups.
And, during the sleeping periods, you were required to take off the
gravity-insulated garments and sleep in huts with insulated floor
coverings. The charged floor, of course, allowed you to sleep without
being smashed flat on the uncomfortable cots. But they had you safe in
these sleeping huts; they took away your clothes and you couldn't step
out of the door without taking on the weight of a half a dozen men.
The Workshop itself was in a vast excavation from whose slopes a
silvery-veined ore was being removed. There were the blast furnace and
reduction plant on the one side and the convicts' huts and more
pretentious houses of the guards on the other. And the choking mists,
and the lurid flame behind. The stifling heat, Luke learned, too, that
every ninth day, with what they called the libration of Vulcan, there
came an equal period of raw and biting cold to replace the heat. As bad
or worse, that would be.
There were perhaps three hundred prisoners here, Luke guessed, and a
guard allotted to each squad of fifteen men. Not many guards for so
large a number of convicts--but enough. The weird gravity of Vulcan had
taken care of that, and the flashlight things they always carried--queer
lights that would instantly neutralize the insulating property of his
clothing and render a man helpless.
* * * * *
Luke was working high up on the slope, with rock drill and pick. The
group to which he had been assigned was composed entirely of new
prisoners, mostly white men, but with a few blacks and one
coppery-skinned drylander of Mars. Whimpering, hopeless creatures, all
of them; not worth his notice. All day he labored without speaking to
any of them and the quantities of ore he removed gave mute evidence of
his tireless vigor. If Kulan, the giant Martian guard, took any notice
of it he gave no sign.
During the sleeping period, which they persisted in calling night,
things were different. No guards were needed in the escape-proof huts
and there was some surreptitious fraternizing among the prisoners. As
long as they made no undue noise, they were left to their own devices.
But for the most part they went to sleep heavily and wordlessly as soon
as they flung into their bunks. A broken-spirited lot.
Luke saw men suffering from some horrible malady that made them cough
and scream and bleed from nose and mouth. Old-timers, these were, men
who had survived for as many as three of four months. He saw them, in
their agony, beg the guards for merciful death; heard the brutal
laughter of their tormentors. Only when they were no longer able to rise
from their bunks were they put out of their misery by one of the singing
darts from the senior guard's gun.
Novak had it, this malady known as X.C.--Novak, the scar-faced,
yellow-fanged rat who occupied the bunk beneath Luke's and who talked to
him in hoarse whispers long after the others had gone to sleep. It was
from Novak that Luke was learning, and the knowledge he gained by
listening to the doomed man served only to intensify the flame of hate
that smoldered deep in his barrel-like chest.
After three red-lit days of grueling labor and three similarly red-lit
nights of listening to Novak, he reached the grudging conclusion that
escape from this place was impossible. With this conviction there came
to him a deeper bitterness and the resolve that he, Luke Fenton, would
have his revenge before he went the way of the rest.
Perhaps the law had him for keeps this time--it certainly seemed so; but
he'd leave his mark on its representatives yet.
* * * * *
At inspection preceding the next labor period, Luke began doing things.
The prisoners were lined up and the guards were parading the line,
reassigning them to new working squads, which were shifted and
rearranged every third day. Kulan, the big Martian, selected Luke.
"You, Fenton," he snapped, "ten paces forward."
Luke grinned but made no move.
Amazed, the guard stepped closer. "You heard me!" he roared. "I'm
keepin' you in my squad, tough guy."
A ripple of astonished comment ran along the line and the other guards
bellowed for silence. Kulan fingered the black tube of his neutro-beam
and his broad face was chalky white.
Luke advanced two paces, still grinning. And he looked up sneeringly
into the grim face that was a foot above his own.
"That's right, you big ape," he grated, "you ain't man enough to fight
the way men fight. Gotta use dart guns, or gravity."
It was sheer baiting of the big Martian. Fenton was shrewd and he knew
the fellow's kind, quick to resent insult and prouder of their physical
size and prowess than of any other possession. He saw the flush that
rose to replace the guard's pallor, saw the huge lithe body go tense.
Laughing derisively, he completed his ten paces with leisurely aplomb.
Speechless with rage, Kulan stood rigid. Furtive boos and a few hoarse
cheers came from somewhere in the long line of convicts, and Luke saw
several men flattened to the ground by swift darting neutro-beams.
And then the head guard came running from the small bastion. "What the
hell?" he demanded of Kulan. "Any trouble?"
Kulan saluted, and his eyes were narrow slits. "No sir," he returned
stiffly, "no trouble."
Eyeing Luke suspiciously, the senior guard grunted, then moved on along
the line. And the work of reallotting squads went on.
* * * * *
It was exactly as Fenton had expected. This Kulan, a head over him in
stature and broad in proportion, was sure in his mind that he could
handle the red-headed Earthman without resort to weapons. And the taunt
as to his physical ability had struck home. In some way that guard would
maneuver matters so the encounter could come about. Besides, he would
endeavor to keep Luke in his squad where he would be able to drive him
to the utmost. The guards, Novak had said, were on the job only a month
when they were replaced by fresh recruits--and their pay was based on
the productivity of the squads they commanded. Kulan had seen that the
Earthman was a real sapper; worth three of the others. And he'd try to
keep it so.
That working period was a highly gratifying one to Luke. With the
rankling hatred concentrated and directed at Kulan, he was positively
gleeful. And yet he was content to bide his time. He swung his pick and
wielded his rock drill with joyful abandon, so that three men were kept
busy loading the ore he removed.
Kulan, he saw with satisfaction, was sullen and watchful. But no word
passed between the two. And the Earthman knew he had planted a seed that
was bound to sprout and grow until it bore fruit.
* * * * *
At the midday mess it happened. The shifting of men had brought Novak in
the same squad with Luke and they came in to sit at the long table
together. Kulan eyed them narrowly from the head of the board.
"Say," Novak whispered, "yuh got under Kuley's skin, know it? He'll run
yuh ragged."
"Yes?" Luke looked up at the guard, saw he was scowling darkly in their
direction, and grinned evilly. "I'll run him, you mean. I'll bust him in
two if I get my hands on him."
"Yuh ain't got a chance, I tell yuh. I seen a guy once, take a poke at a
guard, and what they done to him was plenty. They----"
With that, the wasted body of Novak bent double and he dropped to the
ground screaming. Blood gushed from his nostrils. Luke had seen the same
thing happen to several others and he knew what to expect. It was all
over for Novak, or nearly over.
Kulan came running and turned the stricken man face up.
"You'll last another period," he snarled. "Get up and eat."
He yanked Novak to his feet and shook him as he would a sack of meal.
The sick man moaned and begged, his head rolling from side to side and
his eyes filmed with pain.
"Let me have it," he whimpered. "I'm done, I tell yuh Kuley. Get
Gannett, if yuh don't believe me."
Kulan slapped him heavily with the flat of his massive hand. "You'll
work another period, sewer rat, if I have to prop you up!"
Then Luke Fenton took a chance. He didn't care particularly for Novak,
nor was he overly concerned by what might happen to him. But this gave
him an excuse, an opening.
He hooked his thick fingers in the collar of Kulan's jacket and twisted
until the big Martian loosed Novak and whirled around. Then Luke drove a
hard fist to his jaw--a pulled punch so as not to betray his real
strength. Nevertheless it set the guard back on his heels and split the
taut skin where it landed.
* * * * *
Pandemonium broke loose in the mess hall. Gannett, the senior guard,
came bellowing down the aisle, and the squad guards were on their feet
in an instant, neutro-tubes and dart guns ready. The uproar of the
prisoners died down.
Kulan shook his shaggy head and crouched low as he circled the Earthman.
Murder was in his heart, and the urge to break this tough guy Fenton
with his bare hands. But Gannett was between them.
"Hell's bells!" he yelped. "What goes on here?"
Then he saw Novak--and heard him. Novak was writhing on the ground,
begging for death. And the chief guard's dart gun twanged as its
needlelike missile sped forth and drove into the sick man's breast where
it sang its shrill song of vibratory dissolution.
In the twinkling of an eye where Novak had lain was only the dust of
complete disintegration and a few scintillating, dancing light flecks
that swiftly snuffed out. A speedy and merciful end.
In the silence that followed, Gannett turned on Kulan. "Why didn't you
send for me?" he demanded.
The guard, white with rage, indicated Luke.
"So--the tough guy Fenton again. Can't you handle him?"
Kulan's yellow eyes flashed fire. "Sure I can; I will. But I want your
permission, sir. With my hands."
"No,"--flatly. And then Gannett whirled to look over the mess tables,
whence a few scattered hisses had arisen.
His gaze was solemn when he returned it to Kulan. Swiftly his black eyes
measured the Martian's giant body, and then they swung to Luke. The
comparison evidently pleased him, for he changed his mind.
"On second thought, yes," he said to Kulan. "It'll be good for
discipline. Only don't disable him; he's too valuable a worker."
Luke concealed his unholy glee; stood glowering savagely. "In fair
fight?" he put in.
"In fair fight," sneered Gannett. He took personal charge of Kulan's
weapons. "All right, you," he yelled then to the mess, "you can watch
this. But if there's a sound or a move from any one of you there'll be
the neutro-broadcast and full gravity for an hour for the whole
flea-bitten gang of you."
He drew back, motioning Luke and Kulan to an open space nearby. There
was not the slightest doubt in his mind as to the outcome, for the
Martian towered over his stocky opponent and was fully fifty pounds
heavier. This irregular procedure would put a stop to some of the open
homage paid to this reputed tough guy by the prisoners, and to the
restlessness among them which his coming had occasioned.
* * * * *
They fought instantly and with silent deadliness of purpose, these two.
Luke drove in two terrible blows to the big Martian's body in the
split-second before they closed, breathtaking punches that rocked Kulan
yet did not slow him up in the least. And then the tangle of arms and
legs and bodies of the two was so swift moving and violent that the
watchers could not follow them.
Now they were up, slugging, clinching; now down, rolling over and over,
straining and tearing at each other like beasts of the jungle. Once,
breaking free, Luke was seen to batter Kulan's face to a bloody mass
with swift, hammering fists that thudded too rapidly to count. And then
the Martian had flung him to the rocky ground so heavily that it seemed
certain the Earthman's end had come. But such was not the case, for
there was a flailing scramble and Luke Fenton rose up with the great
body of Kulan across his shoulders. He spread his legs wide and heaved
mightily.
The Martian guard kicked and squirmed, lashing out with his huge fists
at the squarely-built and squarely-planted body of the Earthman below
him. But to no avail. Grasping a shoulder and a thigh, Fenton
straightened his thick arms and Kulan was hoisted aloft. Amazingly then,
the madly struggling guard was flung out and away to land with a
sickening thud, smashed and crumpled on the rocks.
Luke stood swaying on those spreadeagled legs and his lungs were near
bursting from the exertion in the noxious atmosphere. "There you are,
Gannett," he howled through swollen lips. "That fair enough for you?"