looked at the blue-green stain that smeared them all. The color of the mud. His hands sweated on the ladder rung. “What is it?”
“Something in the mud. A radioactivity, I think. It seems to turn the carbon in human flesh to a crystalline form. You become a living jewel. It’s painless. But it’s....” He didn’t finish.
Beads of sweat stood on MacVickers’ forehead. The men standing watching him smiled a little. There was motion behind them. Loris and Pendleton stiffened, and their eyes met.
MacVickers said steadily, “I don’t understand. The mud’s outside.”
Loris said, with a queer, hurried urgency, “You will. It’s almost time for the other shift....”
He broke off. Men scattered suddenly, crouching back in a rough circle, grinning with feral nervousness. The room was suddenly quiet.
The crouching man had risen. He stood with his huge corded legs wide apart, swaying with the swaying of the floor, his round head sunk between ridges of muscle, studying the Earthman out of pale, flat eyes.
Loris put his old, bitter boy’s face close to MacVickers. His whisper was almost inaudible.
“Birek. He’s boss here. He’s mad. Don’t fight him.”
II
MacVickers’ grey-green eyes narrowed. He didn’t move. Birek breathed in slow, deep sighs. He was a Venusian, a coal-swamper from his size and pallor and the filthy-white hair clubbed in his neck.
He shimmered, very faintly in the dim light. The first jewel-crust was forming across his skin.
Knife-sharp and startling across the silence, a round hatch-cover in the floor clashed open. Sweat broke cold on MacVickers. Men began to come out of the hole, just at the edge of his vision. Naked, dirty men with silver collars.
They had been talking, cursing, jostling. The first ones saw Birek and stopped, and the silence trickled back down the shaft. It was utterly quiet again, except for the harsh straining of lungs against the hot, wet air and the soft sounds of naked men climbing the ladder.
The cords ridged on MacVickers’ jaw. He shifted his balance slightly, away from the ladder. He could see the faces thrust forward in the dim light, eager, waiting.
Shining eyes, shining teeth, cheek-bones shining with sweat. Frightened, suffering men, watching another man fear and suffer, and being glad about it.
Birek moved forward, slowly. His eyes held a pale glitter, like distant ice, and his lips smiled.
“I prayed,” he said softly. “I was answered. You, new man! Get down on your belly.”
Loris grinned at Birek, but there was no humor in his eyes. He had drawn a little away from MacVickers. He said carelessly:
“There’s no time for that now, Birek. It’s our shift. They’ll be burning us if we don’t go.”
Birek repeated, “Down on your belly,” not looking at Loris.
A vein began to throb on MacVickers’ forehead. He looked slight, almost small against the Venusian’s huge bulk.
He said quietly, “I’m not looking for trouble.
“Then get down.”
“Sorry,” said MacVickers. “Not today.”
Pendleton’s voice cracked out sharply. “Let him alone, Birek! You men, down the ladder! They’re going for the shockers.”
MacVickers was aware of movement overhead, beyond the glass roof. Men began to drop slowly, reluctantly, down the ladder. There was sweat on Pendleton’s forehead and Loris’ face was as grey as his eyes.
Birek said hoarsely, “Down! Grovel! Then you can go.”
“No.” The ladder was beyond Birek. There was no way past him.
Loris said, in a swift harsh whisper, “Get down, MacVickers. For God’s sake get down, and then come on!”
MacVickers shook his head stubbornly. The giant smiled. There was something horribly wrong about that smile. It was the smile of a man in agony when he feels the anaesthetic taking hold. Peaceful, and happy.
He struck out, startlingly fast for such a big man. MacVickers shrank aside. The fist grazed past his head, tearing his ear. He crouched and went in, trying for a fast body-blow and a sidestep.
He’d forgotten the glimmering sheathe. His fist struck Birek on the mark, and it was like striking glass that didn’t shatter. The pain shot up his arm, numbing, slowing, sickening. Blood spattered out from his knuckles.
Birek’s right swept in, across the side of his head.
MacVickers went down, on his right side. Birek put a foot in the small of his back. “Down,” he said. “Grovel.”
MacVickers twisted under the foot, snarling. He brought up his own feet, viciously, with all his strength. The pain of impact made him whimper, but Birek staggered back, thrown off balance.
There was no sign of hurt in his face. He stood there, looking down at MacVickers. Suddenly, shockingly, he was crying. He made no sound. He didn’t move. But the tears ran out of his eyes.
A deep, slow shudder shook MacVickers. He said softly, “There’s no pain, is there?”
Birek didn’t speak. The tears glistened over the faint, hard film on his cheeks. MacVickers got up slowly. The furrows were deep and harsh in his face and his lips were white.
Loris pulled at him. Somewhere Pendleton’s voice was yelling, “Hurry! Hurry, please !”
*
The guards were doing something overhead. There was a faint crackling sound, a flicker of sparks in a circle around the top of the wall. Shivering, tingling pain swept through MacVickers from the silver collar at his throat.
Men began to whisper and curse. Loris clawed at him, shoved him down the ladder, kicked his face to make him hurry. The pain abated.
MacVickers looked up. The great corded legs of Birek were coming down, the soles of the feet making a faint, hard sound on the rungs.
The hatch closed overhead. The voice of the dying Earthman came dry and soft over his shoulder.
“Here’s where you’ll work until you die. How do you like it?”
MacVickers turned, scowling. It was hot. The room above was cool by comparison. The air was thick and sluggish with the reek of heated oil and metal. It was a big space, running clear to the curving wall, but the effect was of stifling, cramped confinement.
Machinery crammed the place, roaring and hissing and clattering, running in a circuit from huge intake pumps through meaningless bulking shapes to a forced-air outlet, with oil-pumps between them.
The pumps brought mud into a broad sluice, and the blue-green stain of it was everywhere.
There were
