The yellow eyes of Janu the Martian glared into his.
“What are you doing here, Earthman? This is my station.”
Then he saw the pressure gauge. He let out a keening wail, cut short by the crunch of MacVickers’ fist on his mouth. MacVickers whirled and swung the wrench.
The loose coupling gave. Air burst whistling from the pipe, and the rhythm of the pumps began to break.
But Janu’s cry had done it. Men were pelting toward him, and the guards were closing in overhead.
MacVickers flung himself bodily on the short hose of the oil-pump.
Birek, Loris, Pendleton, the dying Earthman, the hard faces behind them. The guards were manning the shockers. Up in the control boxes black tentacles were flashing across banks of switches. He had to work fast, before they cut the pressure.
Birek was ahead of the others, very close. MacVickers gave him the oil-stream full in the face. It blinded him. Then the nearest shocker came on, focussed expertly on MacVickers.
He shut his teeth hard, whimpering through them, and turned the hard forced stream of oil into the hoarsely shrieking blast from the open pipe.
Oil sprayed up in a heavy, blinding fog. Burning, shuddering agony shook MacVickers, but he held his hose, his feet braced wide, praying to stand up long enough.
The catwalks were hidden in the oily mist. The ventilating blowers caught it, thrusting it across the whole space. MacVickers yelled through it, his voice hardly recognizable as human.
“You, out there! All of you. This is your chance. Are you going to take it?”
Something fell, close by, with a heavy thrashing thud. Something black and tentacled and writhing, covered with a dull film.
MacVickers laughed, and the laughter was less human than the voice.
“Cowards!” he cried. “All right. I’ll do it all myself.”
Somebody yelled, “They’re dying. Look!” There was another heavy thud. The hot strangling fog roiled with hidden motion. MacVickers gasped and retched and shuddered helplessly. He was going to drop the hose in a minute. He was going to fall down and scream.
If they stepped the power up one more notch, he was going to fall down and die. Only they were dying too, and forgetting about power.
It seemed a static eternity to MacVickers, but it had all happened in the space of a dozen heartbeats. There were yells and shouts and a sort of animal tumult in the thick haze. Suddenly Pendleton’s voice rang out of it.
“MacVickers! I’m with you, man! You others, listen. He’s giving us the break we needed. Don’t let him down!”
And Janu screamed, “No! He’s killed the guards, but there are more. They’ll fry us from the control boxes if we help him.”
The pressure was dropping in the pipe as the power cut out. There was a last hiss, a spurt of oily spray, then silence. MacVickers dropped the hose.
Janu’s voice went on, sharp and harsh with fear. “They’ll fry us, I tell you. We’ll lie here and jerk and scream until we’re crazy. I’m going to die. I know it. But I won’t go through that, for nothing! I’m going back by the ladder and pray they won’t notice me.”
More sounds, more tumult. Men suddenly torn between hope and abject terror. MacVickers said wearily into the fog,
“If you help me, we can win the war for our worlds. Destroy this bell, start the Jovium working, destroy Io—victory for us. And if you don’t, I hope you fry here and in Hell afterward.”
They wavered. MacVickers could hear their painful breathing, ragged with the emotion in them. Some of them started toward the sound of Pendleton’s voice.
Janu made an eerie wauling sound, like a hurt cat, and went for him.
*
MacVickers started to help, but the current froze him to the metal floor. He strained, feeling his nerves, his brain dissolving in a shuddering fire. He knew why the others had broken so soon. The current did things to you, inside.
He couldn’t see what was happening. The heavy mist choked his eyes, his throat, his nostrils. The pitching of the bell was a nightmare thing. Men thrashed and struggled and cursed.
So he had killed the guards. So what. There were still the control boxes. If they didn’t rush them before the oil settled, they wouldn’t have a chance.
Why not give up? Let himself dissolve into the blackness he was fighting off?
A great pale shape came striding through the mist toward him. Birek. This was it, then. Well, he’d had his moment of fun. His fists came up in a bland, instinctive gesture.
Birek laughed. The current made him jerk only a little, in his thin diamond sheathe. He bunched his shoulders and reached out.
MacVickers felt himself ripped clear of the floor. In a second he was out of focus of the shocker and the pain was gone. He came nearest to fainting then, but Birek’s huge hand shook him by the hair and Birek’s voice shouted,
“Tell ’em, little man! Tell ’em it’s better to die quick, now, than go mad with fear.”
“Come on!” yelled Pendleton. “Here’s our chance to show we’re still men. Hurry up, you sons!”
MacVickers looked at the Venusian’s face. The terrible frozen fear was gone from his eyes. He wanted to die, now, quickly, fighting for vengeance.
The gray, pinched face of Loris loomed abruptly out of the fog. It was suddenly young again, and the smile was genuine. He said,
“Let’s teach ’em to mind, Birek. MacVickers, I....” He shook his head, looking away. “You know.”
“I know. Hurry up with it.”
Pendleton’s voice burst out of the fog, triumphantly. Janu crouched on the heaving deck, bleeding and whimpering. MacVickers yelled,
“Who’s with me? We’re going to take the control boxes. Who wants to be a hero?”
Birek laughed and threw him bodily up onto the catwalk overhead. Most of the men came forward then. The three or four that were left looked at the Martian and followed.
Birek helped them up onto the catwalk. They were moving, now. It took only a few seconds. MacVickers divided them into two groups.
“You men that are sheathed go first, to help block the charge. It’ll be your job to take the Jovies out of the way. Quick, before this fog settles enough so they can see to focus on us.”
They split up, running along the walk that connected with the control boxes, hurdling the bodies of Jovians suffocated in oil. Presently the glassite door loomed before them.
Birek and the dying Earthman led MacVickers’ party. The Venusian wrenched open the door. And MacVickers felt his heart stop.
There were three Europans instead of one. The guards
