them.
The fog began to whip past him. He groaned, thinking that it was going. And then he put his head in his hands and wept with incredulous, thankful joy.
The oily mist was being sucked into the box by powerful ventilators. MacVickers remembered Loris saying, “They get the pure air. Our ventilator tubes are only a few inches wide.”
He laughed. The bell swooped sickeningly. Somewhere off in the fog he heard screams and shouts and Pendleton’s voice roaring triumph.
He thought, “We never could have done it if the tide hadn’t come and made the Jovies seasick.”
He laughed again. It tickled him that seasickness should lose a war.
IV
They went in and up the ladders into the sealed storage space next the convict quarters. There was a huge cylinder of lead suspended over the mouth of the duct from the extractor.
“They must collect the stuff when they bring oil and supplies,” said Loris. “Well, MacVickers, what happens to us now?”
MacVickers looked at them, the lines deep in his face. “We all agree, don’t we, that there’s no hope of escape? If we wait until the next supply ship comes and try to take it, we lose the chance of doing—well, call it our duty if you want to. That is, to wreck their only source of the explosive that’s winning the war for them.
“I think you know,” he added, “what our chances of taking that ship would be, without offensive weapons or any protection against theirs. It would only mean a return to this slavery, if they didn’t kill us all outright.”
His grey-green eyes were somber, deeply bright.
“It comes down to this. Shall we turn this bell into a disintegrator bomb, setting the Jovium free to destroy its own and every other metallic atom in the mud, or shall we gamble our worlds on the slim chance of saving our necks?”
Loris looked down at the deck and said softly, “Why should we worry about our necks, MacVickers? You’ve saved our souls.”
“Agreed, then, all you men?”
Birek looked them over. “The man who refuses will have no neck to save,” he said.
There was no disagreement.
MacVickers turned to the leaden cylinder. It was fixed to the duct by a plastic-lined, lead-sheathed collar. There was an arrangement whereby a plug could be driven into the open mouth of the filled cylinder without spilling a grain of the stuff.
MacVickers reached up and loosed the apparatus that held the cylinder upright. It fell over with a shattering crash. A palely glowing powder puffed out, settling over the adjacent metal.
MacVickers had one second of terror. An eerie bluish light grew, throwing faces into strong relief. Pendleton, praying silently. Loris, smiling. The blue-sheathed Earthman with closed eyes, his face a mask of peace. The others, facing a death they understood and welcomed. All of them, thinking of three little worlds that could go on living their own lives.
Birek grinned at him. “I’m glad you ran away,” he whispered.
MacVickers grinned back.
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