Norman looked into her black eyes and ice formed in his heart. "So that
was one of Sade's men back there."
The outside speaker was still on and in the silence came the crackle of
flame as the wind fanned the jungle fire into a rage of orange tongues
around the ship. The thermo glass instantly turned black and its
faithfully expanding seams began pushing inward against the heat.
Into the room came the hissing of a giant snake. The glass was suddenly
drenched with a misty green liquid.
_Antipyrol!_
The fire went out as Norman jumped to the window and a silvery bulk
floated down into the jungle beside them.
It was a space cruiser, a late model. Twin burnished coils encircled
its silvery hull-counteractive coils. Norman knew that, beginning now,
was an ordeal that could end only in death for himself or whoever
manned that ship. It was Johnny's ship. Inside it could not be a friend.
Through the filter glass, lighted with the fire gone, he could see out
but they couldn't see in. A port opened in the cruiser's glittering
side, steps fell to the jungle floor and three men stepped out.
Norman was not surprised. Two of them wore the fiery red uniform of
the Mercurian patrol and Norman's eyes narrowed when he saw their
companion. Fat, clad in a silk shirt with his electric arm swinging
jerkily, down the steps came the Mercurian ambassador, Gorig Sade.
He and his patrolmen strode through the muddy ashes with their guns
drawn. Norman's fingers itched for the triggers of his starboard guns.
With one burst--! But the guns were empty. Cursing the Venusian woman,
he reached for his pistol. He'd shoot it out point blank from the door.
Then as his hand moved toward the panel switch to open the door he
barely felt the needle enter his back. He saw Keren jump away with the
hypodermic needle in her hand.
If she had been a man Norman would have shot her on the spot. Instead,
he just looked at her with all the hate in his soul, feeling now the
stinging sensation in his back, knowing that _something_ was already
seeping into his veins--to knock him out, paralyze him, kill him--just
when he had a chance at Sade, just when he had a chance to solve the
mystery of Johnny's death sentence and perhaps find something here to
save him.
"The crash must have shook 'em up pretty bad," said a voice outside.
"We'll have to cut the door open."
Oddly, as Norman stared at the hypodermic syringe in Keren's hand he
remembered a trick he'd once pulled on Jupiter. A last ditch trick.
* * * * *
His hand jumped to a lever on the panel and jerked it down. He heard
an oath mingled with the hiss of antipyrol as his full extinguishers
spurted their jets into the jungle for fifty yards around the ship.
When he looked out, he saw Sade and the two red-uniformed patrolmen
staggering about blindly in the green rain with their hands covering
their eyes.
"They'll be blind as bats for half an hour," Norman laughed, cutting
off the spray. He jerked a coil of rope from the panel compartment. "I
don't know what you stuck me with," he told Keren, "but if I go out,
you are going to be tied up till I come to." In a moment he had her
wrists securely tied behind her. Keren remained silent, staring at him
with black-cat eyes half closed.
Throwing the door switch, he stepped to the port and found the three
men standing in the ashes between the ships, digging at their swollen
eyes. "Get out," he ordered the sullen Venusian and she walked down the
steps ahead of him.
As he went out a streak of flame hissed over the woman's head and
splattered on the metal hull beside his shoulder.
He jumped backward into the cabin, behind the protecting wall. Peering
out carefully, he saw a gun barrel glinting in the cruiser's door. He
smiled. "Sade!" he yelled, loud enough for the blinded Mercurian on the
ground to hear. "I'm giving you five seconds to tell whoever's in that
cruiser to come out. Then I'm shooting you in the legs--then your good
arm--then your yellow belly!"
The fat man groped about wildly, helpless and confused.
"One!" Norman counted. "Two ... three ... four--"
"Come out, Swart!" Sade shouted. "He'll kill me!"
"Throw down your gun and come out with your hands in the air," Norman
ordered and to his surprise the dark-mustached man of his first
acquaintance appeared in the door with his hands upraised as a pistol
plopped into the mud. "Who else's in there?" Norman was taking no
chances.
"Nobody, Mr. Norman. That's all of 'em." With excitement in her voice,
Dorothy appeared behind the dark-faced Swart and Norman felt a warmth
of relief that she was safe. "They picked us up right after you left,"
she said.
"Come here and hold this gun, honey," Norman said. "Miss Vaun sabotaged
our ship but we've captured a whole herd of pigs and we're going to
have a barbecue." Dorothy ran across the mud to him. "Keep this gun
pointed at the fellow with the mustache. If he tries anything while I'm
tying his hands, pull the trigger."
In a moment, Swart was firmly bound and sitting on the cruiser's steps.
Sade and the patrolmen stood, rubbing their blind eyes and cursing.
"You slimy hog," Norman said, jerking Sade around as he kept an eye on
the patrolmen. "If I didn't want you to do a lot of talking first, I'd
tie this rope around your neck instead of your hands." It was the first
time Norman had ever tied up an artificial hand but he only pulled the
rope the tighter. Then he sat the unholy group down on the steps of the
ship and surveyed them with a wide grin.
"All right," he said, "who's talking first, before I start skinning
each one of you with a pen knife."
"There's a notebook in the cruiser, Mr. Norman," Dorothy said. "I heard
the fat one talking about it. They've found something here and the
notebook tells all about it."
"So it's all written down for me," Norman laughed. "Watch 'em, Dorothy.
If they get fidgety, call me." He entered the snug, well-remembered
cabin. Keren's hypo must have been pretty weak. He still felt nothing.
He frowned, puzzled to see a narrow tank built around the cushioned
wall. Pushing aside the space units--life preservers--hanging on their
customary hooks, he rapped the tank with his knuckles. It was heavily
insulated, a liquid of some sort sloshing inside. Shaking his head, he
went on into the pilot room where his eyes immediately fell on a small
black notebook lying on the control panel. He picked it up eagerly.
"_Complete life cycle accelerated_," he read on with an eerie thrill.
Then, abruptly universal scientific language. "_One year equals
approximately twenty minutes_...." Remembering the quick growing grass,
he read on with amazement. Then, abruptly the page became a cross-word
puzzle of chemical symbols--it would take time to figure them out--
"I don't want to stay out there, Mr. Norman," a voice interrupted him.
It was Dorothy standing in the door. "They're saying such bad words."
* * * * *
Norman grinned. "Point your gun at 'em to hush," he said. She grinned
back, wrinkling her freckled nose and went outside again as he returned
to his perusal of the symbols.
They were a description of the elements in _something_, in a very
unusual combination. Then slowly his eyes raised from the notebook
again. Something deep in the shadows of his mind was trying to
speak--not about the symbols--about something else. Something he had
done? Something he had seen? Anyhow, Norman had been in enough bad
spots to pay attention when that ghostly feeling sounded its alarm.
Closing the notebook, he stepped across the pilot room and walked into
the cabin, into a pistol's point blank explosion.
The burst of flame seared Norman's left side. In the same second,
as his hand came up to grab the gun, he realized the impossibility
of getting it in time. Swart was too close. His hand dropped to his
blistered side. Swart had him between death and surrender.
"You're lucky," Swart's mustache wiggled as he spoke. "Get outside."
Dazed at the unbelievably swift change of events, Norman obeyed. And
as his foot hit the first step he knew what had called him from the
notebook.
Dorothy--_was no longer Dorothy_....
* * * * *
She had been changed when she entered the ship a moment ago but he
hadn't realized it. Staring at her full lips, her higher cheek bones,
her snub nose that had straightened into a smooth profile--he forgot
the sudden switch of gun authority until Swart jabbed him in the back.
He went down the steps, his eyes on what had been the fifteen year old
fugitive from a high school journalism class. Just out of pig-tails and
giggles--Dorothy Gray was suddenly a woman. Her freckles were weirdly
absent now, her blond hair was longer, her arms were more full--her
legs--her--! Her white coveralls had shrunk on what was now a slim,
lithe figure. But it was really Dorothy--the same pert face, the same
kitten-like eyes, wide with an astonishment as great as his own.
Sade's laughter broke Norman's blank stare. "Next time you tie up a man
with an artificial arm make sure it isn't electric. It's easy to cause
a short circuit when you're soaked with fire extinguisher fluid and
when they short circuit they burn through rope very easily."
But Norman barely heard him, barely saw Swart untying the patrolmen
whose swollen eyes were beginning to see again. He was remembering!
"_Complete_ life cycle _accelerated. One year equals approximately
twenty minutes._" He offered no resistance as Swart jerked the notebook
from his hand. As the grass grew, so had Dorothy--so had Johnny, to the
horrible near-completion of his life cycle. But why wasn't Sade, Keren,
the others affected? Why not himself?
"Let's get in the ship," Keren broke into his thoughts. "There's no
sense wasting the best years of this girl's life out here." With an
unholy smile she walked up the steps into the cruiser.
"Get in the ship, Norman," Sade said, smiling like a puddle of oil.
"You've got a lot more to see before we waste the best years of your
life."
Inside the cruiser, Dorothy sank into a pillowed chair and jerked a
small pocket mirror before her blue eyes. She seemed unable to decide
whether to laugh or cry. Sade, Keren and the patrolmen left for the
pilot room, leaving Swart on guard. Immediately, the green foliage fell
away from the windows as the ship climbed out of the jungle.
There were tears in Dorothy's eyes but her newly red-bloomed lips were
tight. There was horror in this thing that had happened, years of her
life whisked away--she must be eighteen now, and she had the radiant
loveliness of clear sunshine.
But Norman's thoughts dwelt little on the heart-quickening results of
her sudden change. He pondered the change itself. Again he calculated
the time she had been exposed to whatever grim atmosphere enveloped
Vulcan--she couldn't have been out there more than a few minutes. And
in those few minutes she had raced through two long years.
"But why wasn't I affected?"
Swart sat across the cabin with his pistol in his lap, hungrily nursing
a cigarette he had bummed from Keren. "You were in the ship," he
squinted his amusement through a smoke ring. "She was on the ground."
He grinned, eyeing Dorothy. "Shows up better on her too."
So that was it--something in the dank soil. But what about the others?
He asked Swart, who only shook his head. "The boss'll tell you all
you need to know." And Norman knew there were many questions yet
unanswered. Johnny hadn't been one to fall into a trap laid by nature
alone. There was something going on here, more than he knew yet, and
something told him that he was on the right track--that in Vulcan's
strange power that dealt both beauty and decay, there was power here
that might save Johnny....
Finally Dorothy decided to laugh. "I don't know what happened," she
said, her voice no longer a child's, "but there seems nothing to do
about it--except to start running around with an older crowd when I get
back home."
_If_ we get back home, Norman thought mirthlessly. If he knew Sade, he
and Dorothy were both in the same boat, a boat that would not be long
afloat. "I'm sorry, Dorothy," he said. "It's my fault you're here."
"Wrong," she shook her blonde head. "I wanted to come with you." He
looked away, sensing for the first time that now, somehow, they were on
a different basis. Dorothy was no longer a child and her girlish hero
worship was apparently replaced by something more mature.
He felt the cruiser nose down. They were landing again.
Norman reached up and yanked a space suit from its wall hook, threw it
to Dorothy. "Put this on over your coveralls." As he jerked another
suit down for himself, he caught a glimpse of a jungle-walled clearing
with a peculiar shaped building at the end of a small landing field.
As they slid to a quick stop, the port opened and Sade and his little
group appeared again. The fat Mercurian laughed as he saw Norman and
Dorothy buckling on the stiff garments. He made no move to stop them.
"Keren tells me you're very interested in our little world," he said.
"That tank along the wall there holds what you're looking for, but
first we must show you around."
Encircled by the four patrolmen, Norman and Dorothy were hustled out
of the ship and across the landing field. The odd, light-house-like
building stood at the end of the field, a large windowless structure
with a conical tower on top. They were led to the building in silence,
ushered into a huge room and the door closed behind them. Venusian
mahogany paneled the tapestry covered walls and heavy carved furniture
was scattered about the room's creamy white floor. Sade opened a heavy
door at the side and motioned his prisoner-guests in.
"I haven't time to talk now," he said. "Here's something to entertain
you until I return." He flicked a button outside the door, then closed
the door, leaving them alone in the small room.
* * * * *
Norman glanced at Dorothy, then turned to examine the place as he took
off his helmet. The room was small, dark paneled and windowless like
the one outside. A furry _zhak_-skin rug covered the black floor. He
started to speak, but a panel at the end of the room suddenly glowed
with the transparent clearness of a window. A television screen--what
was Sade up to!
Then Norman sucked in his breath through his teeth as Dorothy
clutched his arm. Not the withered creature of the hospital but the
tousle-headed guy he'd grown up with--Johnny's image appeared on the
screen.
Johnny stood in what at first appeared to be a clearing in the jungle
but as he kicked at some invisible obstacle, Norman realized a wall of
glass separated him from the surrounding field outside. The scene was
sparkling clear, as if they were watching through a window Johnny's
futile efforts to scale the smooth wall. His path around the enclosure
proved it to be circular, about eight feet in diameter. Norman ground
his teeth. So Johnny _had_ been Sade's prisoner!
Johnny took off one of his metal-soled shoes and started hammering the
fine glass as if something whipped him into a frantic effort to escape.
Dorothy silent beside him, Norman watched the black-haired boy rub his
eyes wearily as he pounded with the shoe. How had Sade gotten this
picture? What was his purpose in showing it now? The glass of Johnny's
prison must have been superbly invisible but soft for slowly he ground
a shallow niche at the base of the wall, a foothold.
Norman felt like yelling a cheer but he whispered an oath as he
watched Johnny grind out a higher foothold. Trying to carve a niche
higher still, his fingers stained the glass red. Quickly the glass
was dripping with blood. "Look at his hands!" Dorothy whispered. In
Johnny's efforts to cling to the wall, the ground glass was eating away
the tips of his fingers.
And Norman shuddered to see the gray change creeping over Johnny's
face. Before his eyes, Johnny's dark hair became streaked with gray
and his ashen face became furrowed with wrinkles. Horror-ridden years,
swiftly heaped upon him.
Dorothy covered her face with her hands. But Norman couldn't tear his
eyes from the luminous screen. The film had been cut to speed it up.
Johnny had hacked five slits in the glass now. His fingers and thumbs
were ragged stumps as he hung on the splintered glass, ten feet up the
blood-smeared wall. And in his terrible fascination, Norman saw that
Johnny's hands healed almost as fast as they were torn. As the dry
flesh of age withered his face, as he sacrificed his hands in a mad
struggle to escape the invisible terror in Vulcan's sunlight.
Norman slammed his fists against the locked door. "Sade! You scum of
the universe!" But there was no answer as his eyes were drawn back
to the screen to see Johnny's fingerless paws grasp the rim of his
prison. A wrinkled, animal-like thing, eyes yellowed and wild, he drew
up his gnarled legs and fell over the glass wall into the gravel on the
other side. Half crawling, half running, he disappeared quickly into
the trees.
As though a prolonged roar of sound had suddenly ceased, the panel
darkened, leaving only Dorothy's muffled sobs.
But in Norman's brain was a numb hate that froze his reason. He didn't
hear the door open behind him.
"Interesting, wasn't it?" It was Sade's voice. "But in a moment an even
more interesting experiment will take place in my laboratory."
Norman turned slowly. Swart and the two patrolmen stood with the fat
man at the door. Norman took one quick step forward. His right hand
shot out. His fingers sank like spikes into the flabby skin of Sade's
throat. Another split second and Norman's fingers would have met behind
the Mercurian's windpipe and ripped it out, but in that split second
the patrolmen were on him. Then he was on the floor, fighting silently
in the blackness of his fury. A heavy boot caught him behind the left
ear and the blackness engulfed him completely.