Part 2

This close to the Sun, Vulcan probably had a constant wind. The gravity seemed approximately the same as Earth's. He plugged in the spectroscope to test the air and as he glanced out the window at the intake valve a slow chill trickled down his back.

It wasn't only the wind moving the grass outside. The grass was _growing._

Dorothy and Keren came to the window. As they watched, the grass beside the hull rose two inches.

"It's horrible," Dorothy whispered. Then, "Look!" she shrilled, pointing.

* * * * *

Norman shook his head as if recovering from a blow, the words of the Mercurian Ambassador ringing in his ears: "Vulcan is a planet without a human footprint...." All science knew of this supposedly untrod planet was suddenly a lie. There, beside the ship, was the unmistakable imprint of a human foot.

As Norman looked up he saw a man step out of the jungle and walk toward them across the grass. A jet gun bounced on the stranger's hip. He wore high-top boots, a checkered hunting shirt and his black-mustached face was heavily tanned. Norman tore himself from his bewilderment and turned on the outside speaker. "Who are you! How did you get here?"

"Same way you did," the receiver brought the fellow's voice inside. "Think you're the only one with a counteractive?"

To Norman's verified knowledge, Johnny's counteractive was the only one listed under inter-planetary patents. He turned on Keren. "What do you know about this?" But she held her carmine lips tight, staring out the window.

"The air must be all right," he said. "Let's go." He took his jet gun from the compartment in the control panel and strapped the holster close to his right hand. Hot sunlight burnished the room as he threw the panel switch opening the space port.

He walked to the door. The stranger waited below, hairy hands on his hips. "I hope you've got an Earthian cigarette. They're scarce around here."

Norman dropped the folding steps and Dorothy, curiosity bright in her kitten-blue eyes, walked out into the windy sunlight. As Norman started out, the port clanged shut in his face, hurtling him back into the middle of the room. Rockets hummed as the ship leaped ten feet in the air.

Keren stood before the panel with her hand on the rise lever. Norman sprang across the room and jerked her aside as the ship sailed out of the clearing and plowed through the tree tops. "I've had enough of your tricks, lady!" he said through clenched teeth.

"No, handsome!" Keren cried. "You've got to get us away from here!" Before he could right the ship she took him from behind and pinned his arms to his sides.

"You fool!" Norman yelled, twisting her hands from him. "We're going to crash!" But the woman fought like a panther, black eyes blazing. Controls gone wild, the ship rolled over on its side, and bumped heavily down into the shadowed mire and ground to a halt.

"You crazy witch!" Norman got to his feet, eying the sloping floor and the smoke curling up from the leaves under the ship. The rockets had set the woods on fire. His port rise-rockets dangled, a twisted mass of tubes. "Why'd you do this?" he demanded, facing her with itching fists. "Who was that fellow back there? Talk," he ordered, "before I slap your painted face off!"

Her eyes were like a half-tamed cat's. "I'm not talking, handsome."

Norman looked into her black eyes and ice formed in his heart. "So that was one of Sade's men back there."

The outside speaker was still on and in the silence came the crackle of flame as the wind fanned the jungle fire into a rage of orange tongues around the ship. The thermo glass instantly turned black and its faithfully expanding seams began pushing inward against the heat.

Into the room came the hissing of a giant snake. The glass was suddenly drenched with a misty green liquid.

_Antipyrol!_

The fire went out as Norman jumped to the window and a silvery bulk floated down into the jungle beside them.

It was a space cruiser, a late model. Twin burnished coils encircled its silvery hull-counteractive coils. Norman knew that, beginning now, was an ordeal that could end only in death for himself or whoever manned that ship. It was Johnny's ship. Inside it could not be a friend.

Through the filter glass, lighted with the fire gone, he could see out but they couldn't see in. A port opened in the cruiser's glittering side, steps fell to the jungle floor and three men stepped out. Norman was not surprised. Two of them wore the fiery red uniform of the Mercurian patrol and Norman's eyes narrowed when he saw their companion. Fat, clad in a silk shirt with his electric arm swinging jerkily, down the steps came the Mercurian ambassador, Gorig Sade.

He and his patrolmen strode through the muddy ashes with their guns drawn. Norman's fingers itched for the triggers of his starboard guns. With one burst--! But the guns were empty. Cursing the Venusian woman, he reached for his pistol. He'd shoot it out point blank from the door. Then as his hand moved toward the panel switch to open the door he barely felt the needle enter his back. He saw Keren jump away with the hypodermic needle in her hand.

If she had been a man Norman would have shot her on the spot. Instead, he just looked at her with all the hate in his soul, feeling now the stinging sensation in his back, knowing that _something_ was already seeping into his veins--to knock him out, paralyze him, kill him--just when he had a chance at Sade, just when he had a chance to solve the mystery of Johnny's death sentence and perhaps find something here to save him.

"The crash must have shook 'em up pretty bad," said a voice outside. "We'll have to cut the door open."

Oddly, as Norman stared at the hypodermic syringe in Keren's hand he remembered a trick he'd once pulled on Jupiter. A last ditch trick.

* * * * *

His hand jumped to a lever on the panel and jerked it down. He heard an oath mingled with the hiss of antipyrol as his full extinguishers spurted their jets into the jungle for fifty yards around the ship. When he looked out, he saw Sade and the two red-uniformed patrolmen staggering about blindly in the green rain with their hands covering their eyes.

"They'll be blind as bats for half an hour," Norman laughed, cutting off the spray. He jerked a coil of rope from the panel compartment. "I don't know what you stuck me with," he told Keren, "but if I go out, you are going to be tied up till I come to." In a moment he had her wrists securely tied behind her. Keren remained silent, staring at him with black-cat eyes half closed.

Throwing the door switch, he stepped to the port and found the three men standing in the ashes between the ships, digging at their swollen eyes. "Get out," he ordered the sullen Venusian and she walked down the steps ahead of him.

As he went out a streak of flame hissed over the woman's head and splattered on the metal hull beside his shoulder.

He jumped backward into the cabin, behind the protecting wall. Peering out carefully, he saw a gun barrel glinting in the cruiser's door. He smiled. "Sade!" he yelled, loud enough for the blinded Mercurian on the ground to hear. "I'm giving you five seconds to tell whoever's in that cruiser to come out. Then I'm shooting you in the legs--then your good arm--then your yellow belly!"

The fat man groped about wildly, helpless and confused.

"One!" Norman counted. "Two ... three ... four--"

"Come out, Swart!" Sade shouted. "He'll kill me!"

"Throw down your gun and come out with your hands in the air," Norman ordered and to his surprise the dark-mustached man of his first acquaintance appeared in the door with his hands upraised as a pistol plopped into the mud. "Who else's in there?" Norman was taking no chances.

"Nobody, Mr. Norman. That's all of 'em." With excitement in her voice, Dorothy appeared behind the dark-faced Swart and Norman felt a warmth of relief that she was safe. "They picked us up right after you left," she said.

"Come here and hold this gun, honey," Norman said. "Miss Vaun sabotaged our ship but we've captured a whole herd of pigs and we're going to have a barbecue." Dorothy ran across the mud to him. "Keep this gun pointed at the fellow with the mustache. If he tries anything while I'm tying his hands, pull the trigger."

In a moment, Swart was firmly bound and sitting on the cruiser's steps. Sade and the patrolmen stood, rubbing their blind eyes and cursing. "You slimy hog," Norman said, jerking Sade around as he kept an eye on the patrolmen. "If I didn't want you to do a lot of talking first, I'd tie this rope around your neck instead of your hands." It was the first time Norman had ever tied up an artificial hand but he only pulled the rope the tighter. Then he sat the unholy group down on the steps of the ship and surveyed them with a wide grin.

"All right," he said, "who's talking first, before I start skinning each one of you with a pen knife."

"There's a notebook in the cruiser, Mr. Norman," Dorothy said. "I heard the fat one talking about it. They've found something here and the notebook tells all about it."

"So it's all written down for me," Norman laughed. "Watch 'em, Dorothy. If they get fidgety, call me." He entered the snug, well-remembered cabin. Keren's hypo must have been pretty weak. He still felt nothing.

He frowned, puzzled to see a narrow tank built around the cushioned wall. Pushing aside the space units--life preservers--hanging on their customary hooks, he rapped the tank with his knuckles. It was heavily insulated, a liquid of some sort sloshing inside. Shaking his head, he went on into the pilot room where his eyes immediately fell on a small black notebook lying on the control panel. He picked it up eagerly.

"_Complete life cycle accelerated_," he read on with an eerie thrill. Then, abruptly universal scientific language. "_One year equals approximately twenty minutes_...." Remembering the quick growing grass, he read on with amazement. Then, abruptly the page became a cross-word puzzle of chemical symbols--it would take time to figure them out--

"I don't want to stay out there, Mr. Norman," a voice interrupted him. It was Dorothy standing in the door. "They're saying such bad words."

* * * * *

Norman grinned. "Point your gun at 'em to hush," he said. She grinned back, wrinkling her freckled nose and went outside again as he returned to his perusal of the symbols.

They were a description of the elements in _something_, in a very unusual combination. Then slowly his eyes raised from the notebook again. Something deep in the shadows of his mind was trying to speak--not about the symbols--about something else. Something he had done? Something he had seen? Anyhow, Norman had been in enough bad spots to pay attention when that ghostly feeling sounded its alarm.

Closing the notebook, he stepped across the pilot room and walked into the cabin, into a pistol's point blank explosion.

The burst of flame seared Norman's left side. In the same second, as his hand came up to grab the gun, he realized the impossibility of getting it in time. Swart was too close. His hand dropped to his blistered side. Swart had him between death and surrender.

"You're lucky," Swart's mustache wiggled as he spoke. "Get outside."

Dazed at the unbelievably swift change of events, Norman obeyed. And as his foot hit the first step he knew what had called him from the notebook.

Dorothy--_was no longer Dorothy_....

* * * * *

She had been changed when she entered the ship a moment ago but he hadn't realized it. Staring at her full lips, her higher cheek bones, her snub nose that had straightened into a smooth profile--he forgot the sudden switch of gun authority until Swart jabbed him in the back.

He went down the steps, his eyes on what had been the fifteen year old fugitive from a high school journalism class. Just out of pig-tails and giggles--Dorothy Gray was suddenly a woman. Her freckles were weirdly absent now, her blond hair was longer, her arms were more full--her legs--her--! Her white coveralls had shrunk on what was now a slim, lithe figure. But it was really Dorothy--the same pert face, the same kitten-like eyes, wide with an astonishment as great as his own.

Sade's laughter broke Norman's blank stare. "Next time you tie up a man with an artificial arm make sure it isn't electric. It's easy to cause a short circuit when you're soaked with fire extinguisher fluid and when they short circuit they burn through rope very easily."

But Norman barely heard him, barely saw Swart untying the patrolmen whose swollen eyes were beginning to see again. He was remembering! "_Complete_ life cycle _accelerated. One year equals approximately twenty minutes._" He offered no resistance as Swart jerked the notebook from his hand. As the grass grew, so had Dorothy--so had Johnny, to the horrible near-completion of his life cycle. But why wasn't Sade, Keren, the others affected? Why not himself?

"Let's get in the ship," Keren broke into his thoughts. "There's no sense wasting the best years of this girl's life out here." With an unholy smile she walked up the steps into the cruiser.

"Get in the ship, Norman," Sade said, smiling like a puddle of oil. "You've got a lot more to see before we waste the best years of your life."

Inside the cruiser, Dorothy sank into a pillowed chair and jerked a small pocket mirror before her blue eyes. She seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or cry. Sade, Keren and the patrolmen left for the pilot room, leaving Swart on guard. Immediately, the green foliage fell away from the windows as the ship climbed out of the jungle.

There were tears in Dorothy's eyes but her newly red-bloomed lips were tight. There was horror in this thing that had happened, years of her life whisked away--she must be eighteen now, and she had the radiant loveliness of clear sunshine.

But Norman's thoughts dwelt little on the heart-quickening results of her sudden change. He pondered the change itself. Again he calculated the time she had been exposed to whatever grim atmosphere enveloped Vulcan--she couldn't have been out there more than a few minutes. And in those few minutes she had raced through two long years.

"But why wasn't I affected?"

Swart sat across the cabin with his pistol in his lap, hungrily nursing a cigarette he had bummed from Keren. "You were in the ship," he squinted his amusement through a smoke ring. "She was on the ground." He grinned, eyeing Dorothy. "Shows up better on her too."

So that was it--something in the dank soil. But what about the others? He asked Swart, who only shook his head. "The boss'll tell you all you need to know." And Norman knew there were many questions yet unanswered. Johnny hadn't been one to fall into a trap laid by nature alone. There was something going on here, more than he knew yet, and something told him that he was on the right track--that in Vulcan's strange power that dealt both beauty and decay, there was power here that might save Johnny....

Finally Dorothy decided to laugh. "I don't know what happened," she said, her voice no longer a child's, "but there seems nothing to do about it--except to start running around with an older crowd when I get back home."

_If_ we get back home, Norman thought mirthlessly. If he knew Sade, he and Dorothy were both in the same boat, a boat that would not be long afloat. "I'm sorry, Dorothy," he said. "It's my fault you're here."

"Wrong," she shook her blonde head. "I wanted to come with you." He looked away, sensing for the first time that now, somehow, they were on a different basis. Dorothy was no longer a child and her girlish hero worship was apparently replaced by something more mature.

He felt the cruiser nose down. They were landing again.

Norman reached up and yanked a space suit from its wall hook, threw it to Dorothy. "Put this on over your coveralls." As he jerked another suit down for himself, he caught a glimpse of a jungle-walled clearing with a peculiar shaped building at the end of a small landing field.

As they slid to a quick stop, the port opened and Sade and his little group appeared again. The fat Mercurian laughed as he saw Norman and Dorothy buckling on the stiff garments. He made no move to stop them. "Keren tells me you're very interested in our little world," he said. "That tank along the wall there holds what you're looking for, but first we must show you around."

Encircled by the four patrolmen, Norman and Dorothy were hustled out of the ship and across the landing field. The odd, light-house-like building stood at the end of the field, a large windowless structure with a conical tower on top. They were led to the building in silence, ushered into a huge room and the door closed behind them. Venusian mahogany paneled the tapestry covered walls and heavy carved furniture was scattered about the room's creamy white floor. Sade opened a heavy door at the side and motioned his prisoner-guests in.

"I haven't time to talk now," he said. "Here's something to entertain you until I return." He flicked a button outside the door, then closed the door, leaving them alone in the small room.

* * * * *

Norman glanced at Dorothy, then turned to examine the place as he took off his helmet. The room was small, dark paneled and windowless like the one outside. A furry _zhak_-skin rug covered the black floor. He started to speak, but a panel at the end of the room suddenly glowed with the transparent clearness of a window. A television screen--what was Sade up to!

Then Norman sucked in his breath through his teeth as Dorothy clutched his arm. Not the withered creature of the hospital but the tousle-headed guy he'd grown up with--Johnny's image appeared on the screen.

Johnny stood in what at first appeared to be a clearing in the jungle but as he kicked at some invisible obstacle, Norman realized a wall of glass separated him from the surrounding field outside. The scene was sparkling clear, as if they were watching through a window Johnny's futile efforts to scale the smooth wall. His path around the enclosure proved it to be circular, about eight feet in diameter. Norman ground his teeth. So Johnny _had_ been Sade's prisoner!

Johnny took off one of his metal-soled shoes and started hammering the fine glass as if something whipped him into a frantic effort to escape. Dorothy silent beside him, Norman watched the black-haired boy rub his eyes wearily as he pounded with the shoe. How had Sade gotten this picture? What was his purpose in showing it now? The glass of Johnny's prison must have been superbly invisible but soft for slowly he ground a shallow niche at the base of the wall, a foothold.

Norman felt like yelling a cheer but he whispered an oath as he watched Johnny grind out a higher foothold. Trying to carve a niche higher still, his fingers stained the glass red. Quickly the glass was dripping with blood. "Look at his hands!" Dorothy whispered. In Johnny's efforts to cling to the wall, the ground glass was eating away the tips of his fingers.

And Norman shuddered to see the gray change creeping over Johnny's face. Before his eyes, Johnny's dark hair became streaked with gray and his ashen face became furrowed with wrinkles. Horror-ridden years, swiftly heaped upon him.

Dorothy covered her face with her hands. But Norman couldn't tear his eyes from the luminous screen. The film had been cut to speed it up. Johnny had hacked five slits in the glass now. His fingers and thumbs were ragged stumps as he hung on the splintered glass, ten feet up the blood-smeared wall. And in his terrible fascination, Norman saw that Johnny's hands healed almost as fast as they were torn. As the dry flesh of age withered his face, as he sacrificed his hands in a mad struggle to escape the invisible terror in Vulcan's sunlight.

Norman slammed his fists against the locked door. "Sade! You scum of the universe!" But there was no answer as his eyes were drawn back to the screen to see Johnny's fingerless paws grasp the rim of his prison. A wrinkled, animal-like thing, eyes yellowed and wild, he drew up his gnarled legs and fell over the glass wall into the gravel on the other side. Half crawling, half running, he disappeared quickly into the trees.

As though a prolonged roar of sound had suddenly ceased, the panel darkened, leaving only Dorothy's muffled sobs.

But in Norman's brain was a numb hate that froze his reason. He didn't hear the door open behind him.

"Interesting, wasn't it?" It was Sade's voice. "But in a moment an even more interesting experiment will take place in my laboratory."

Norman turned slowly. Swart and the two patrolmen stood with the fat man at the door. Norman took one quick step forward. His right hand shot out. His fingers sank like spikes into the flabby skin of Sade's throat. Another split second and Norman's fingers would have met behind the Mercurian's windpipe and ripped it out, but in that split second the patrolmen were on him. Then he was on the floor, fighting silently in the blackness of his fury. A heavy boot caught him behind the left ear and the blackness engulfed him completely.

III

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."