Wild disorder followed. Immediately there was the raucous call of the
general alarm siren and a flashing light from the bastion that paled the
red mists to a sickly, luminous pink. Full gravity coming down with
crushing force on the hapless prisoners.
Luke, as he was flattened, gasping painfully under the enormous
pressure, saw that Gannett and the rest of the guards were not affected
by the neutro-broadcast. They stood erect and moved freely among the
prisoners who sprawled everywhere in grotesque squashed heaps. Queer.
There was no way of beating the authorities at this game.
* * * * *
Gannett transferred Luke to the dreaded sealed cell in the reduction
plant, a room spoken of in hushed whispers by the convicts, and in which
it was reported an inmate suffered indescribable tortures for the better
part of three weeks. Then he died in horrible misery, for one could not
survive longer than that.
Kulan had not been killed. He would recover, but was pretty well smashed
up, with a fractured hip and several broken ribs, one of which had
punctured a lung. It would be necessary to return him to Mars on the
next ethership, due in two days. Strangely, the news brought Luke no
great amount of satisfaction.
When they locked him up in the sealed cell for his first period of labor
he saw there was only one other occupant. A tall lanky Earthman with
narrow aristocratic features and keen gray eyes. He was perhaps
forty-five, slightly stooped, and with thin graying hair. Luke had seen
him several times at mess and had contemptuously classed him as a
highbrow. Fuller, his name was.
This was a small room where several slender chutes brought down tumbling
crystals of a silvery salt from somewhere above, emptying it into glass
containers that stood in endless rows in wooden racks. You filled these
containers with the salt, then sealed them in lead tubes and packed them
for shipment. There was a faint pungent odor in the air of the room, a
new smell that widened Luke's nostrils and caught at his throat and
lungs.
In this place you were watched by a guard who came regularly each half
hour and spied on you through a peephole.
Child's play, the work in the sealed cell. Luke went at it
half-heartedly and he spoke no word to Fuller after the heavy door had
closed them in. After ten minutes of silence he caught himself watching
his companion furtively.
What was there about Fuller that marked him as superior to Luke and the
rest of the convicts? A good gust of wind would blow the man away; a
woman might easily beat him in a rough and tumble. Yet this man had
something which unmistakably proclaimed greatness, the same something
that gave authority and power to the smart guys of Earth and Mars.
Brains--book-learning! Luke snorted.
Fuller was looking at him with calmly appraising gaze. Luke scowled
darkly, but the keen eyes that measured him did not waver.
"You're a fool, Fenton," came from the thin lips.
"What!" Luke advanced threateningly.
"I repeat: you are a fool." Still the gray eyes were unwavering.
"Why, you--you----" Spasmodically Luke's fingers closed down on the
spare shoulder with crushing force.
* * * * *
By not so much as the flicker of an eyelash did Fuller betray the pain
that must have come with that grip. He did not even wince, but swiftly
lashed out with a bony fist, raking Luke's cheek with sharp knuckles.
The blow stung, but was utterly futile. With a single cuff Luke could
send the man sprawling; with a single wrench of his powerful hands, snap
his spine. Yet he did neither, and the impulse to laugh coarsely died in
his throat. Here was courage of a kind he never had encountered; here a
man in whose bright eyes fearlessness and defiance mingled with a cool
disdain that brought the first real feeling of inferiority Luke ever had
experienced.
He relaxed his grip of Fuller's shoulder and his big hands fell loosely
at his sides. It was that action which saved Fenton. He did not know it
at the time, nor would he have believed it. But he was to remember many
times and finally to realize it, though he never fully understood.
"That's better," breathed Fuller. And the ghost of a smile crinkled the
corner of his mouth.
At the old man's warning Luke returned to his own work bench and was
industriously engaged when the guard's eye showed at the peephole. Then
the eye was gone and he grinned over at Fuller.
"How long you been in here?" he ventured.
"Five days in the sealed cell; ten altogether in the Workshop."