Battered and bruised, he found himself on his feet when he came to.
Sade stood in the door, his good hand fingering the blue welts on his
throat. His shirt was in shreds, exposing the white blob of flesh that
was his body and the helpless sausage-end stump that was his right arm.
"If I could get my hands on you--" Norman whispered.
"You won't again," Sade said hoarsely. "You're in my hands now. And
within the hour I shall have _two_ of them. With them I shall keep you
alive forever while you die a thousand deaths. I hold the key to life
and death, on Vulcan...." He whirled again and left, followed by his
henchmen and the door locked again behind them.
The silky _zhak_-skin rug was worn with Norman's pacing when he heard
the key click in the lock again. The door opened to Keren Vaun. Ghostly
beautiful against the soft light outside, her starry loveliness meant
nothing to Norman. He sprang to the door and covered her scarlet lips
with one hand, closed the door quickly. "Tell me how to get to Sade,"
he demanded, "or I'll wring your neck right here!"
Keren remained rigid until he loosened his grasp. Then: "Shut up," she
whispered. "I came to help you escape." She didn't look at Dorothy. "I
came to help you on one condition. That you take me with you--alone."
Norman hesitated three heart beats. "Let's go," he said. He heard
Dorothy gasp behind him but he didn't even look back as Keren opened
the door, finger to her lips, and led him out.
Locking the door behind her, she led him down a dim, white-floored
corridor. Norman walked carefully, the baggy suit rustling as he moved.
Keren halted before a door at the side of the passage. Glancing up and
down the vacant hall, she opened the door quickly and went in. Norman
followed.
The room was bare with another closed door on the other side. "You
don't need that space suit," Keren ordered. "Take it off." Norman
peeled the suit off obediently. It was no time for questions. "When I
jabbed you with that hypo before Sade found us, it immunized you. It's
a vaccination Sade discovered; we're all protected here."
As Norman marveled at this strange woman, understanding now that fact
of his own salvation from the powers of Vulcan, she motioned toward
the door opposite the one through which they had entered the room.
"Sade's--John Gordon's cruiser is outside where we left it, about a
hundred yards from this door. It's unguarded but there's a guard in
the tower. He'll shoot when he sees you so you must get to the ship
quickly. The cruiser's guns are loaded. If you make it, take off and
blast this building. I'll run for the woods." Keren's heavy-lashed eyes
met his. "When they are dead, Vulcan will be ours."
Norman smiled. "What if I don't come back? What if I pull out and radio
Earth for help?"
Keren returned his smile, her eyes like a moonless night. "If you don't
come back, I'll kill the Earth girl inside." She threw back her head,
hair swirling at her pale throat like the flow of black oil. "Now kiss
me--and go."
It was a choice; Keren's life or Dorothy's. If he got the ship and
Keren ran for the woods, his guns would have to find _her_ before they
turned on the house. Then he could bargain with Sade by radio. "I'll
owe you a thousand kisses," he said, opened the door, and darted out
into the sunlight. Then it was raining red heat as liquid fire spurted
around his pounding legs.
A bare twenty yards ahead, the cruiser waited, glinting silver in the
sun. His pants leg caught fire and he could feel its blistering heat,
fanned by the wind, as he streaked across the gravel.
Then he saw it too late. A sheen of crimson in the air. Streaks of
red, painted on nothing. _Johnny's blood!_ Flame from the guns behind
him sizzled on the invisible glass as Norman, unable to check the
piston power of his legs, crashed into the invisible wall of what had
been Johnny's prison. His forehead hit the glass with a hollow ring.
Clutching the wall with both hands, he slid down to the gravel and into
darkness for his second failure that afternoon.
Roughly, they dragged him back to the house. But he wasn't out. Through
the searing pain in his head he had fought back to consciousness as
the patrolmen touched him. His mind limped through the pain, trying to
figure out what to do now as they dragged him into the big front room
and dropped him on the floor.
"Imbeciles! Careless fools!"
The voice opened Norman's eyes, banished the throbbing in his head as
he struggled to his feet. But the two patrolmen locked his arms behind
him.
"How did he get out!" The fat man glared from Norman to the patrolmen.
Swart stood beside him.
"There were only two keys to that room," Swart suggested.
Sade's florid face paled, then his button eyes flickered with the cold
cruelty of a wild animal. "Find Keren," he said softly. "Bring her to
my laboratory."
Rick's eyes showed helpless fury as his arms tightened in the
patrolmen's grasp. "Keren had nothing to do with it," he said. "I
picked the lock."
Sade reached out and slapped his face repeatedly with his open palm.
Hands clamped behind him, Norman took it, barely feeling the stinging
blows, their impact light under the impact of what he saw.
"Yes! It's real!" Sade halted his slapping and, laughing like a fiend,
rolled up his sleeves. He held his hands up close before Norman's eyes.
Norman shuddered, staring at Sade's right hand. Slightly smaller,
ghastly white but firm, where the stump of Sade's right arm had been
was now flesh. Blood coursed through the bulging veins, a pale hand
extended pudgy fingers.
* * * * *
Sade howled with laughter as Norman drew back from the thing as from a
snake. "It's real!" Sade shouted, gleefully. "Flesh and blood! I have
two hands now!" Exultantly, he held his clenched fists before Norman's
white face. "In these hands I shall hold the pulse of the universe,
to let it throb or halt at my will. I shall be neither king nor
dictator--I shall be a god! The power of life and death in the universe
is mine!"
Lifting his gaze from the hands, Norman met the fat man's eyes coldly.
"How'd you do this, Sade?"
Sade's laughter dwindled to a greasy smile. "After seeing what the
power of Vulcan did to your friend, perhaps it is fitting that you
should see this power in reverse." He nodded at the patrolmen. "Bring
him along."
In an arm-lock on both sides, Norman was dragged down the same corridor
where he had followed Keren in his futile attempt to escape. They
halted at a door at its far end. Sade opened the door and Norman was
shoved in.
The place was white-walled and bare, like a hospital room but without
the usual furniture. On a four-legged platform in the center of
the room lay a large porcelain cylinder, like a chamber used for
sterilizing surgical instruments, but the surface of the cylinder was
smooth, without gadgets, only a heavily bolted cap at one end. Sade
patted the cylinder as a sculptor might admire the work of his chisel.
"This holds what John Gordon sought and what you seek now to save his
life," he smirked. "This container holds fluid from Vulcan's Fountains
of Youth!"
Standing before the cylinder, Norman's mind's eye searched the
situation for some chance of escape. Here was what he had come so far
to obtain and he was powerless to take it. But perhaps it wasn't time;
there was much he needed to know.
"Vulcan's power is a radiation," Sade said, "but not from the Sun. It's
a liquid under the ground, like Earthian oil--a radioactive element
such as science has only found traces of in the cosmic rays. More
powerful than radium, it exudes an exciter to growth--a living force."
"How'd you discover it without being affected by it?" Norman asked.
"Your friend Gordon was the guinea pig," the Mercurian said. Norman
kept still. "After we took him and his cruiser when he entered the
Protection Zone, we came here immediately. Working in space suits
until my technicians on Mercury discovered an immunization, we brought
Vulcan's strange liquid in like an oil gusher. The effect of the pure
liquid is instantaneous; its effects on the surface of the ground
outside are greatly diluted. While we built this house round the well,
we watched Vulcan's milder effects on your friend in the glass cage."
Norman's jaw paled, but he kept his head. "How did Johnny get off the
planet after he escaped?"
"Fool!" Sade laughed. "He didn't escape. We could stay and watch him
every minute--that's why we left the automatic camera to record his
reactions. He did contrive to get out of the cage but when we found
him in the jungle we simply took him off the planet and dropped him in
space in a life boat where he'd be picked up." Sade laughed again. "Did
you think I didn't know he built two ships with counteractives! John
Gordon's return was merely a message to you--to come here in that other
ship. Now we have the only counteractives in existence. Vulcan is an
utterly impregnable fortress. No army in the universe can interrupt my
plans."
Norman realized that everything Sade said was true. No power could
approach Vulcan without a counteractive. "What are your plans, Sade?"
The fat man held up his new right arm, his small eyes glowing. "My
technicians obtained for me the hand-bud of an unborn child. It was
embedded in the stump of my right arm." He stared at his hand stretched
its white fingers, his thick lips smiling. "With but a brief exposure
of my arm to a spray of Vulcan's liquid in full strength, I _grew_ the
hand of a thirty-year-old man!" He banged the cylinder with his fist.
"What would happen if I sprayed this life-death fluid in a city street!
It can be placed in a shell and fired from a gun. I have here a _Force_
that can cause the most horrible of wounds--quick decay. It can utterly
destroy or immediately heal. How I use this power depends upon how
quickly the governments of the universe submit to my wishes in a new
stellar order."
But Norman had a question stronger than his hopelessness at what he'd
just heard. "Could this liquid help John Gordon now?"
Instead of replying, Sade smiled. He stepped over to one of the
room's blank walls and pressed a small button. A wide panel slid back
revealing several tiers of wire cages containing monkeys, rabbits,
and white rats. Sade scooped a plump slick rat out of its cage and
and closed the panel again. Walking back to the cylinder, he slapped
the helpless creature's head against his wrist and stunned it. Then,
drawing a flat shelf from the cylinder's platform, he dropped the
unconscious rat on it and threw the heavy bolts on the cylinder's cap.
* * * * *
Inside the thick-walled container, Norman discovered, were neatly
coiled tubes hanging on pegs. Sade grabbed one of the small hoses,
pulled it out and squeezed a button on the little nozzle. A fine,
blood-red spray hissed from the nozzle and he directed the red mist
upon the limp body of the white rat. The damp liquid had barely touched
the rat's fur when instantly its small face wrinkled, its fur grew
coarse and thin and it assumed the appearance of a very old animal.
Still smiling, Sade glanced at Norman's troubled gaze, then shut off
the hose, stuck it back in the cylinder and drew out another. The spray
that dampened the rat this time was light pink. The rat's coarse coat
thickened, its sides swelled before Norman's eyes and youth was born
anew in the little animal's very brain as it leaped to its feet and
scurried around the shelf with all the energy of fresh strength.
"It's like many poisons," Sade said. "Full strength, its effect is
death. Greatly diluted--with mere water--its miracles make it an elixir
supreme...."
The door opened to Keren, followed by Dorothy and Swart. Keren's poise
little hinted she'd plotted Sade's death less than an hour ago. Dorothy
had removed her space suit; her eyes were red from crying. Keren took a
cigarette from her loose blouse. "You sent for me, Sade?"
The Mercurian's eyes were like a rattlesnake's as he held out his two
hands for her to see. "I have these now," he said softly. "Soon I shall
have every world at my command. Will you marry me?"
The dark-haired woman lit her cigarette calmly, her hand steady. "Yes,"
she answered simply.
Sade laughed. "You say yes now because your life is at stake--because
you tried to aid the Earthman. But for that you won't lose your life,
Keren. You will lose something you value more than your life, Keren.
You will lose--your beauty. Get a rope, Swart."
Keren flicked her cigarette into Sade's face. Quick as a whip, her hand
entered the throat of her blouse. Norman saw the glint of naked metal
flash in an arc toward Sade's chest. Dorothy gasped.
[Illustration: _Keren whirled and lunged at the screaming Mercurian._]
The silver dagger sank into Sade's chest just over his heart. The fat
man staggered back. But before he could fall, Swart acted, as quick as
a ferret, clipped Keren's chin, and as she crumpled silently to the
floor, he caught the gasping Mercurian and eased him down.
From Sade's chest blood spurted higher than the dagger's hilt as Swart
yanked one of the hoses from the cylinder and directed its crimson
spray on Sade's wound. Slowly, Swart drew out the dagger's sticky blade
in the spray. When the dagger was out of Sade's chest there was no
visible sign of a wound. Sade opened his eyes and looked up at them.
"What shall I do with her?" Swart said.
Sade got to his feet. He stood there, panting a moment. "The rope," he
said. Swart pushed a wall button, extracted a length of cord from a
panel compartment and returned. "Tie her to the cylinder," Sade hissed,
"and tie the nozzle of the hose in her hair."
In a moment, the unconscious Keren was hanging by her backward-bent
arms from the cylinder. The cord was tight from her wrists, around
the cylinder and under to her slim ankles. In her hair was fixed the
slowly oozing hose. A rivulet of red trickled down her smooth cheek.
"What about these two?" Swart said, motioning toward Norman and Dorothy.
"While we go to repair the new counteractive ship which Mr. Norman so
kindly brought us," Sade said, "we can leave him and his girl in the
glass cage."
As they were marched across the field, Norman remembered Johnny's
face on the hospital pillow--tragic, old. Now, in the green beauty of
this time-thundering world, this same fate reached for them as it was
caressing Keren's cheek in the white-walled room in the tower. Norman
put his arm around Dorothy's shoulder.
She drew away. "You deserted me for Keren once. Worry about her now,
not me."
Swart grinned. "You can argue that out while you grow old together," he
said. The patrolman who had come out with them picked up a metal ladder
beside the invisible wall and leaned it against the rim of the glass.
Then, smiling, he walked back and grabbed the collar of Dorothy's
coveralls. "We sealed up the chinks to keep 'em from pulling the same
trick Gordon did but hadn't we better strip 'em to make sure?"
Norman's fists tightened but he felt the barrel of Swart's pistol dig
into his side. Then, on a quick thought, he drew a half-empty pack
of cigarettes from his pocket. "Leave her alone, Swart. We haven't
anything to escape with. Take these cigarettes for our clothes."
The dark man's hand snatched them greedily. "I don't know why I don't
take both." But he stepped away from the ladder and waved his pistol at
them. "All right. Get in there. In ten seconds I'm shooting."
* * * * *
Norman followed Dorothy up the rungs of the ladder, climbed around her
and--as Swart raised his gun menacingly--hung on the rim of the glass
and dropped the twenty feet to the gravel inside their prison. Dorothy
climbed over and dropped into his waiting arms.
As the patrolman took the ladder down, Sade and the other red-uniformed
gorilla left the house and walked toward them across the field. They
came up and halted before the glass, staring in at them and laughing.
Dorothy stood beside Norman and he took her hand tightly.
"When they leave we'll start to work," he whispered. "We've got to get
you out of here quick."
"Why only me?"
He told her about Keren's hypodermic work. "But first you've got to
believe me," he said. "I didn't desert you when I left with Keren. It
was our only chance to escape. I was coming back for you. You've got
to believe me." He turned and took her shoulders in his hands, looking
into her blue eyes.
She bit her lips, staring at him. Then, "I don't want to believe
anything else."
Norman squeezed her shoulders, then glanced up to see Sade and his men
walking toward the cruiser, leaving the house deserted except for Keren
chained to a doom of unspeakable horror inside. The cruiser leaped from
the field and floated past them over the jungle. Eying the high rim
of the glass wall, Norman waited until the ship disappeared over the
horizon, then backed against the glass quickly and held out his hand.
"Quick!" he told Dorothy. "Stand on my shoulders and try jumping!"
Dorothy placed one small foot into his hand and swung up to his
shoulders. Norman raised to his tiptoes--every inch counted. "Jump!
High!"
Her fingertips missed the rim of the glass two full feet and clawing
the slick surface, she slid back down into Norman's arms. "Try again!
We've got to get you out of here!"
Again and again she placed her foot in Norman's hand, swung up, leaped
high--and fell back again, her forehead bruised from bumping the glass,
her fingernails broken.
"You'll never make it," Norman said wearily. "We've got to think of
something else." Hammering his fist into his palm, he started pacing
the wall. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and started clawing the
gravel. But he hadn't dug six inches when he scraped against concrete.
Several different holes proved the ring of glass rested on what had
been a refueling platform. "Sade would have thought of that."
He started pacing the wall again, running his hand around the smooth
glass. There _had_ to be a way out! The glass had been the pilot-room
shell of a ship, its tapering nose sliced off. He thought of trying to
rock it back and forth to turn it over. But the glass weighed tons.
He turned and stared at Dorothy helplessly. She had scratched her
finger in one of her falls. Proving again that only her body had grown,
she immediately stuck her finger in her mouth upon the discovery of the
scratch. Norman's brain seethed. He couldn't let this girl die here.
Now, he realized, he faced the same problem that had been Johnny's. And
he knew what withering shadow would claim Dorothy's lips if he failed.
Vulcan was a hell of priceless, fleeing moments; each heartbeat a drum
sounding a sickening doom of decay. Each tick of his watch was the
footfall of death one step closer. The invisible terror that hovered
over Vulcan was beyond the grasp of imagination--but it was real! As
real as Keren's pale face under that trickle of red horror, as real as
Dorothy's fresh loveliness which would soon be eaten away--unless he
could get her away from here.
Neither he nor Dorothy had any metal with which he might attempt
Johnny's mad feat. Standing there, looking about the enclosure,
Norman's heart beat quicker with each second as each second took its
unseen toll upon the girl who was his responsibility. Looking at her
golden hair glinting in the sunlight, Norman suddenly realized she was
more than a responsibility.... Quickly he turned away.