in bewilderment. Then he turned industriously to his first-aid kit and set to work with her helmet trappings. Swiftly he uncapped the triple valve socket connected to her respirator, screwed the heavy metal tube to the top of his smelling-salt container.
Immediately the powerful aromatic ammonia fumes surged into her helmet, set her lips moving with sudden revulsion, forced her clear, dark eyes to open in sudden alarm.
“Better?” Cardew whispered into her external receiver, as he recapped her respirator and laid the salts container beside him.
She nodded weakly. “Yes—I think so. I—I don’t know where you’ve come from, but it certainly was opportune.” She spoke rather shakily in a voice that was pleasantly mellow. “I thought I was going to make a perfect target for the sican!”
“Not with my oxygen pistol in good order.” He smiled. Then, locking his arms round her metal-clad waist he heaved her to her feet. Her face was clearly relieved and grateful in Europa’s murky light.
“I guess that was good of you,” she said warmly. “You risked your life. Probably you’re thinking I’m an awful fool to pass out like that? Suppose we call it plain fright?”
He ignored her apologies. “American?” he questioned eagerly.
She nodded. “By inheritance, yes—but born on this ghastly planet through no fault of my own. I’m Claire Mason, daughter of Hubert Mason, the settlement governor.”
He stared at her in amazement; her gaze, too, was one of polite inquiry.
“I’ve heard of you, of course.” He hesitated. “Like the rest of the people on this ghastly world, you’re its prisoner. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here all the same.”
She laughed shortly. “That’s easy! If you’d been born here because your father and mother’s social position demanded that they give up all thought of Earthly life and devote their lives to this planet, what would you do on seeing a private, small-sized space machine fall two hundred miles to the east? You’d head for it, of course! Well, that’s what I’m doing. I reckon about three weeks before pressure wipes it out. Naturally, there are no small ships at the settlement—only the useless, heavy prison machines, and they’re about crushed to powder.”
She paused and regarded him rather naively. “I know you can’t be Dr. Livingstone,” she said demurely. “But just the same, I suppose you have a name?”
“I did have a number,” he growled; then, more sociably, “James Cardew’s my name—escaped prisoner trying to get back to Earth to prove my innocence. I’m heading the same way as you are.”
“Really?” Her voice seemed a little cool. She seemed to sense there was something not quite right about hobnobbing with an escaped prisoner.
“I suppose, since the governor’s place is twenty miles from the settlement, you took a wider route to this jungle?” he asked.
“Obviously,” she said calmly. Then, tossing aside her uncertain manner, she went on earnestly, “I want to see the world I belong to, feel natural instead of artificial gravity, breathe fresh air, see fields and great cities—New York in particular. It must be wonderful!”
“Not bad,” he admitted reflectively.
“To get back to Earth—or, rather, to visit it for the first time—I’m prepared to risk Jupiter drag in the spaceship. That is, if it’s still spaceworthy.”
“It’ll probably mean death,” he said.
But she only shrugged inside her huge suit. “Supposing it does? Better than Jupiter. In fact, I—”
She stopped short and gave a little cry, made a clumsy movement backward into Cardew’s protecting right arm.
“What—what is it?” she gasped in alarm, pointing. “Look!”
He tugged out his gun again. “Take it easy,” he murmured. “A joherc, or I miss my guess!”
They stood motionless, watching the fantastic creature that had suddenly appeared in the clearing, plainly visible in the now combined lights of unclouded Europa and Ganymede. It moved cautiously, with a certain oddly childlike nervousness quite incongruous for such a tremendously powerful body.
“A joherc, all right,” Cardew affirmed. “Heard of ’em many a time, and heard their description, but never saw one. They’re pretty good scientists in their way—maybe a bit dangerous, though.”
Still they watched as the joherc came into complete view—a biped, only two feet tall, with two legs nearly as thick as a man’s body and almost fantastically muscled. Further support was provided by the broad, kangaroo-like tail. on which it sat ever and again. Its remaining anatomy was made up of a pear-shaped body, stumpy arms, enormous pectoral muscles and chest—in which, according to description and reconstruction at the settlement bureau, there beat three powerful hearts to create a normal circulation in the eternal drag. On the mighty shoulders was the strange, triple-jointed neck, semi-human face with wide, half-grinning mouth and scaly head.
A pure product of ammonia, living in a climate ideally suited to it—a living, thinking creature of superhuman strength and swiftness, mentally active, yet humanly childlike in manner—a veritable cosmic paradox.
The two remained motionless as the creature advanced. His broad nostrils were quivering oddly, scenting something. The deeply-set, many-layered eyes stared penetratingly round the coldly lighted clearing—then suddenly espied Cardew’s smelling-salt container! That was enough! The joherc dived like a flash of gray and seized the container in a powerful hand, picking out the already half-pressure-crushed crystals with the blunt fingers of the other, tossing them into his huge mouth,
Cardew came to life at that and let out a yell. “Hey, you! That belongs to my kit! Get out of it! Get going!”
He flung himself forward strainedly and snatched up the container with a gloved hand, slammed the cap back on top of it. The joherc sat on its broad tail, licking its lips complacently. Obviously, with its usual phenomenal sense of smell, it had detected the crystals from a distance. Such a treasure trove, though sheer poison to an Earthling, was evidently too much to resist.
“On your way, joherc!” Cardew snapped, returning the container to the hook on his belt. “No crystals going free!”
The joherc made no move, but his keen eyes followed Cardew’s every move as he returned to the relieved girl, replacing his pistol in its holster.
“Obviously not hostile,” was her comment.
He grinned behind his face glass, “Not while I have these crystals, anyhow.” He chuckled. “Try to imagine a guy wandering around with a bag of priceless gems, not caring much whether he had them or not. If you were naturally decent, would you be hostile? No, sir! You’d just stick around on the chance of getting some—”
He stopped and looked about him. “What do we do?” he asked. “Stop for the night or carry on?”
She surveyed the jungle’s menacing depths. “Might as well carry on, since every moment counts. We’ve got to find our way through this tangle somehow and reach the Seven Peaks. Let’s be going.”
“Suits me!” He fell into clumsy step
