Part 2

"I know you will. No human-being has the nerve structure to stand up under our harsher persuasive methods. It is quite important for us to learn your method of treating impervium for these faster-than-light ships."

"But my method doesn't work."

"That's true," interjected Thurner. "We talked about it on the way out."

"Most regrettable!" Again that unpleasant, half-dead membrane flashed across the Neptunian's eyes. He seemed to sleep. Minutes passed before he looked up again. "In that event," he said, "you must suffer for the good of Neptune. Follow me." He waited while Timmy climbed into a heated, anti-gravitational space suit.

Thurner cuffed Johnny Damokles to his feet and motioned for him to put on a space suit. Then completely in command of the situation, the Neptunians led Tim and Johnny out into the blue cold of a monster and horrible world. They paused long enough for Thurner and his companion to remove the space suits they'd worn in the heated cabin of the _Solabor_, and when Thurner seemed to peel his very skin from his body, Timmy understood the miracle by which the pilot had posed as a Callistonian.

III

The pilot was actually a Neptunian. But a beautifully made synthetic skin served him as an undetectable protection against both heat and gravity ... made him, to all appearances, an Inner-Worldian. Timmy was amazed. These Neptunians were _surgeons_ ... and thermal engineers.

"This way," motioned the Neptunian, and drew in a vast breath of Neptune's methane atmosphere. His chest swelled until its minute scales seemed on the verge of separating. Man-like in height and size, his adaptation to a terrible gravity had made him a creature of steel-hard sinew and muscle. Thurner, or whatever his proper name might be, was almost as solid and several inches taller. No wonder he could consume Callistonian whisky by the quart and still navigate a ship successfully.

They walked across the plain, dropped downward into a slit-like canyon. Ahead of them lay a fortress whose only decoration was the simple symbol of the Tsom clan. Its walls bristled with blast guns, but closer examination showed Timmy that they were all of an obsolete pattern. Methane had clogged their rifling and made them utterly useless.

"These aren't used," said their guide. "Just there to frighten away lower forms of life. Watch!" He flicked a switch, and the wall's outer surface raised to reveal a vast network of grids. "Heat grids," he explained. "Perfect defense against the other clans."

"But we don't need defence," added Thurner. "Neptune is a united planet now."

The gates swung wide, and Timmy, with an empty feeling, walked in. Johnny Damokles followed. His antiquarian interests still shielding him from the horror of their situation.

The council chamber, holy-of-holies, audience room, or whatever the Neptunians called it, was perhaps the most impressive place either Timmy Gordon or Johnny Damokles had ever entered.

Black rock lined the walls and seemed one with the primeval essence of absolute cold. Atmosphere, at 17 G's, pressed hard against them, barely repelled by their space suits. The Neptunian turned. "If this," he said, "were a nightmare, I'd order you to kneel and worship at the feet of the Clan Tsom's god."

"Why not?" Timmy's belligerent Irish chin thrust out.

"Because, my dear guests, we have advanced considerably beyond such idle superstitions. Neptune, and the Tsoms, are the perfection of true civilization. We _know_ there are no gods. We are neither concerned with ritual nor rank. Here, all are equal, under my _leadership_."

"Interesting," commented Timmy. "I seem to have heard it before."

Johnny Damokles nodded. "She are wonderfuls idea ... but gods is dam' important fellers. So is old time's history."

The Neptunian looked at him. "What," he asked Thurner, "is this? Some primitive?"

"A Greek," the pilot explained. "Sticks to the old beliefs and the old ways of Terra."

Those nictitating lids nicked up. "Then ... he's of no use to us."

"He'll do for raw material." Thurner shoved the little Greek to the floor, "Use him for Extract 47-a. Humanizing fluid."

The Neptunian shuddered. "The thought," he said, "of treating another of our people with that semi-humanizing element is repulsive. But sacrifice in the interest of conquest is needed. We must have more Neptunians capable of resisting higher temperatures and lower gravities."

Thurner grinned. "Precisely," he said. He turned to Timmy, and judged him as a man might judge a Percheron stallion. "This one is too lean."

The Leader nodded. "Our dear guest will be of use in research and mechanics. We might even grant him certain liberties."

Timmy glared at the monster, hating that assumed tolerance, then spat with deliberation on the floor. "Try to use me," he grunted.

* * * * *

"_A challenge?_" The Leader pressed a button. A bell rang, and two squat Neptunians glided into the chamber. There was a burble and a hissed command. The Neptunians retreated, then returned dragging a small box behind them. Its wires were a tangle maze of tentacles. Icy cold exuded from it, to chill the two Callistonians even through their heavily-heated space suits. The Leader barked an order. Timmy found himself flat on his back with a Neptunian servant pressing the face-plate of his suit down hard. There was a little whirl of power. Agonies unimaginable shot through every nerve of his skull. He screamed. Restraint was impossible. The pain eased.

"You see!" said the Neptunian, "that treatment does no harm to nerves or tissues, and actually prolongs life."

Timmy looked past the grinning faces of his tormenters and fixed his glare on the reptilian Leader. "Try again," he said. "I'm still tough."

The pain came back. It spun through skull and brain like a biting buzz-saw. Timmy gritted his teeth, then again came the inevitable scream. He wanted to faint. He prayed for death. But that buzzing pain was an elixir ... a stimulating and eternal torment. Timmy's hands thumped hard against the floor. His feet jerked, his spine arched, and he screamed again and again in a great crescendo. The pain eased.

"Could you stand that," said the grinning Neptunian, "for a lifetime?"

"_No!_"

"Then I warn you, the next time we apply it, you'll be alone in a dark room ... with a time clock on the door set for a one-week period. No one will enter. No one can stop the _treatment_. Will you cooperate?"

"Within limits."

"That's for me to judge. Give me the figures on how you managed to create that ship of yours."

"That's agreeable. You could take them anyhow." Timmy reached into a pocket of his space suit. He pulled out a bundle of papers and handed them to the Leader. "I warn you," he added, "they won't work." Then he swore at himself for saying that. If, by ingenuity, he could manage to convince the Neptunians that his ship would work, he might waste a lot of their time in research and give the Inner Worlds time to find out what was happening. "I might manage to make one work at that," he added swiftly.

The Neptunian scanned the papers. "No," he said, "this report of your scientific laboratories is definitely conclusive. I can see that you've done everything possible. The ship you have, or _had_, is a freak. But you're an expert in mechanics and photography. We'll put you in the research labs. Your friend can go with you until we need him."

The Neptunian cast one final look at the two captives, smiled, and walked away. Thurner jerked his head at an inner door. "Come on," he ordered. "Your quarters will be near the labs." He led them down a succession of corridors to a room where temperature and gravity stood at Earth-norm, and Callisto constant. "You can do without those suits," he said, and shut the door.

Timmy and Damokles looked around. The room was lighted quite brightly. A window gave onto the plain. Above them, Triton whirled its endless mad dance, speeding across the sky in the opposite direction of the planet's rotation. Timmy watched it. Here and there in the dark sky, synthetic power-moons hovered to steal energy from the cosmos.

"They gonna feed us, anyhows," said Johnny Damokles, and turned on the faucet of a food conveyor. Hot, spicy-scented edibles poured forth, but Timmy wasn't interested. Not far from them, half-lost in the gray light, two giant semi-globes towered heavenwards. Tim stared at them. Apparently the Neptunians were building another power-moon to add to that whirling band above. He watched as squat figures moved up and down its side, then walked from the window in a fog. Damokles tried to engage him in conversation, but Timmy was too defeated. He fell asleep.

* * * * *

Morning dawned swiftly because of the giant planet's rapid rotation. Seven hours of total blackness were then followed by a _day_ ... but a day in name only. The sun out here had only one one-thousandth of its Earthian strength. For human purposes, it was useless. Timmy was standing by the window when the door swung open. Thurner stood on the threshold.

"Come on," he ordered, "your job is ready." He looked at Johnny Damokles. "Might as well use you, too. Get into your space suit." The little Greek obeyed.

The next seven hours passed as a nightmare for Timmy. For Johnny, working outside as a slave on the power-moon, they must have been pure hell.

Timmy returned to their room that evening to find a tired little Greek sprawled on the couch. "Work you hard, chum?"

Damokles groaned. A livid weal ran down the side of his face, where a blow had slammed his head about in his helmet. "We get these Neptune bums ... Timmy," he said.

"Sure thing, pal. But how?"

The Greek shrugged his shoulders. "They guards you close?"

"No ... but we couldn't get away without the ship."

"Yeah." Damokles' chin dropped on his chest. "I guess we gives up." But despite the Greek's apparent despair, he had an idea of some sort. Timmy Gordon knew it, but he also knew that Johnny was afraid to talk about it in a room where sound detectors might pick up any hint of escape. "Let's go to sleep, Johnny," he said.

"Yeah ... you stay your side of bed, too. Last night you kick me blacks and blue in rib."

Which was distinctly untrue.

But if that was the way Johnny wanted things ... it was distinctly QX with Timmy Gordon. He stretched himself on the narrow couch beside Johnny. For twenty minutes he seemed to doze, then began kicking about fretfully, and muttering as though in the clutch of a nightmare.

"That's right, Timmy," the little Greek whispered. "Keep her going. You kicks hard ... yells ... them spies are too busy watching you. I can talks."

Timmy's reply was another boot to Johnny's shin. "Go on," he whispered, then kicked again.

"Remember what I say to you in ships?"

"About what?"

"About fool gods Neptune ... cataltickic agents ... Aristotle."

"Yes."

"Maybe I are right."

"So what?"

"Maybe if impervium get soaked on Neptune long enough ... then maybes it behave like metal in your ship?"

"Go on." Timmy groaned, thrashed about. Threw a fist that thudded into Johnny's ribs. The Greek grunted, and resumed his whispering.

"They puts me working on power-moons outside."

"Yes?"

"She are mades from metal of wrecked space-liner. I see one plate who say XC-34 on her."

"Great Jupiter, Johnny! That's the liner I got the metal for my ship from ... just one fin was all I had to work with."

"Shut up! Dam' fools. Want him Neptune stinkers hear you?"

Instead of answering, Timmy grunted in his supposed sleep. Damokles whispered on: "They don't guards me! They make me be dam' fool clowns for Neptuners to laugh at. 'Get sky hook! Get bucket steam-ice!' That's what them lizards-men holler at me."

"Yes?"

"Then ... _cracks_! Hit Greek with fist. Don't like."

"Skip it, Johnny. What's your idea?"

"I hear them say ... artificial power moon ain't gonna be that at all. Gonna be giant bomb. Gonna load with tons an' tons an' tons of _dynotron_. Shoot him to Jupiter ... blow all air off everythings!"

"Good lord! Dynotron would do just that ... and then they'll repeat the procedure."

"Is right! I hear lizard-pig say just that!"

"How do you figure on stopping 'em, Johnny?"

Damokles wriggled, poked Timmy hard with his elbow. "Lay still!" he shouted. "I can no sleeps!" He butted up against Timmy, and began to whisper in fast chaotic broken murmurs. "I got a long story to tells you, Timmy. All about powerful old Greeks' king."

For half an hour they trashed about, while Damokles unfolded his plan. At last, Timmy grunted. "QX," he said. "Can do!" He rolled over and fell into an extremely troubled sleep.

IV

The next day, at Neptune's dawn, Johnny Damokles was led back to his work on the _dynotron_ bomb. Timmy, sleepy-eyed and wavering, followed his captors to a place in the mech lab. He worked quietly for half an hour, then beckoned to his overseer.

"Yes?" hissed the Neptunian.

"I want to see your leader."

"Why?"

"None of your blasted business. Just do what you're told, or be mighty blasted sorry."

The Neptunian scratched an itching neck flange. "All right," he said, "but you'd better have something to make this worth while." He shoved Timmy forward, released a door catch, and led him down the hall. Three staccato raps opened another door, and Timmy again stood in the presence of Neptune's Leader.

"Yes?" the Leader's voice was suave, but flat. "Oh, it's you ... you've something important?"

"I want to work in the photo-lab."

"Something to do with your way of sensitizing impervium?"

"That's right."

"Utterly useless. We've checked the figures of your own labs and find that they are completely accurate. That ship of yours is a freak ... and we can see no reason as to _why_ it works."

"I still have an idea."

The Neptunian glared at him, and again that dead-alive membrane concealed all key to his thoughts. "You're not trying to convince me you're willing to join us, are you?"

"Nope," Timmy's Irish jaw shot out belligerently, "I just figure it'll be easy to escape from there."

A hiss was apparently the Outer-worldian's manner of laughing, for the hiss he emitted was as jovial a sound as Timmy had heard since landing on the planet. "I mean it!" Timmy finished, "and I warn you to watch me."

"Your spirit," the Neptune said, "is admirable." He scrawled a few notes, handed them to Timmy. "Here," he said, "is an order to work in the photo-labs. I shall watch your struggles with great pleasure." His hand closed on Timmy's shoulder and Timmy gritted his teeth, shook his way loose, and walked to the door.

Mockingly, the Leader laughed.

* * * * *

That night, when Timmy returned to their room, he found the little Greek seated, eyes blazing, on the bed. "S'matter, chum?"

"Dam-blasted Shelton Thurner ... chase me all over hell for sky-hook. Don't like it!"

"Forget it. You're tired and so am I. Grab off a mouthful of that synthi-food and let's hit the hay." He turned on the faucet, drew a cup of steaming brew and handed it to the Greek.

"I got the mixture," he whispered between gulps. "Did you get the metal?" The Greek nodded. "Yep," he replied, then in a louder tone. "Let's get to bed, Timmy."

Lights were quickly extinguished, and the two, with much moaning and groaning, crawled under the covers. But tonight there was need for action, not talk. Timmy pushed the blankets up to make a low tent, and handed Johnny a torch he'd stolen. Improvised though it was, their bed made a flawless, light-tight darkroom. Timmy climbed out to make sure no ray escaped, then plunged into bed again.

"The metal!" he grunted. Johnny Damokles handed him a tiny piece of impervium. It was, approximately, three inches square.

"Swell," said Tim. "Now hold this light." He dug deep into his pockets and pulled forth a bottle of stolen liquid. "As nearly as I can tell, this is the same mixture I used in making my other ship." He dipped the square of impervium in it, then waited. Dry at last, he wiped the metal square until it shone, and grinned as the first reactions started. "It works!" he nearly shouted. But that was neither the time nor the place for shouting. "Watch!" he whispered. Taking the torch from Johnny Damokles, he held it close against his treated impervium. The little square darted away so swiftly that it nearly tore loose from his hand. It did pull him a foot or so toward the edge of the bed before he switched off his light. There was no doubt about it. Impervium, when exposed to some unknown Neptunian radiation, underwent an untestable change and behaved precisely as had the metal of his ship.

"Hallelujahs!" burbled Damokles beneath his breath. "Now we fix up dam' fool Shelton Thurners."

"Maybe?" said Tim with unexpected pessimism. "I've stolen enough fluid for feet on that dam' bomb." He paused, "Are you sure the whole thing's impervium?"

"Yep! But how I gonna rub this stuff on ship?"

"Don't rub it. Pour this bottle on a high perpendicular point and let it run down the sides. We'll take a chance that the dim light here on Nep will prevent our process from knocking your bomb over ahead of time."

"Yeah. Then you get more solutions. We pour her on ... an' dam' bomb go sail away fast as hell!"

Timmy grinned. "Not quite, pal," he said, "I'm figuring on something just a little more effective." He took a piece of paper and made a few hasty sketches. Johnny Damokles watched with interest. Then he broke into a smile.

"I see," nodded the Greek. "She are just like story I tell you about old Greek king."

"Exactly.... And now, let me have time enough to get rid of our scrap of test metal and we'll turn in."

"No," protested Damokles. "Give me this piece impervium. I got good idea. Secret."

Timmy, without further question, handed Johnny the bit of treated impervium and added to it his bottle of stolen liquid. "Good night, chum," he mumbled, and rolled over to sleep.

* * * * *

Ten days and ten nights passed in that way. Each night Timmy had another flask of his sensitizer to give Johnny. And each night Damokles reported another successful application of the fluid. Miraculous that the two of them could so successfully hoodwink their captors? Yes. But then the Neptunians thought of the two as members of a lesser race, and gave them almost complete freedom of movement ... within limits. Timmy blessed the arrogance from which this stemmed. From the photo-labs he stole his sensitizer. In the mech labs he succeeded in removing and assembling certain vital cogs and rheostats. Put together they would give him control of Neptune's gigantic _dynotron_ bomb. And Timmy Gordon was the man to put any machinery together. He did it on the tenth day. That same day, he stole a length of steel chain and a sharpened metal hook. Why he stole them, Timmy Gordon didn't know. But Damokles had asked him to, and he'd given his promise.

"Here you are," he said when he reached their room that night. He slipped the hook and chain to Johnny beneath the covers of their bed. "Goin' fishin' with it, chum?"

"You bet your dam' boots. I catch fat fish, too."

Timmy smiled. Then, quietly, he showed Johnny Damokles the piece of apparatus he'd constructed. It looked somewhat like the primitive 20th Century radio sets one saw in museums, but its purpose, as Tim explained, was more important. Compact, weighing no more than fifty or sixty grams, it gave him complete radio control of anything treated with his sensitizing fluid. What was more important, it took its power from almost any faint source of light, and should be effective up to two or three thousand miles.

"She work?" asked Damokles.

"She will if static doesn't cut me out too much."

"Dam' good," grunted the Greek. "Now we show them dam-blast Neptuners what good Old Greek History are."

"Correct, chum. When will the bomb be ready?"

"She are ready now."

"Swell! I might as well blast her off."

"No!" Johnny Damokles' tone was urgent, pleading. "You wait ... do him tomorrow when Neptune fellers can see."

Morning dawned with its usual dim lessening of the Neptunian murk. A methane breeze rolled down from some distant mountain range and swirled in noxious vapors across the plain. Two Neptunian guardsmen saw a flicker of movement in a nearby sandheap and cut loose with the fullest fury of their heat-grids. There was a crackle. An unassimilated tribesman rolled over, kicked a spurred foot in the air, arched his haunches and died.

The little tragedy, repeated time and again on that ruthless planet, was no more than window-dressing for more significant events. The crackling, burning grids were crackling arcs of doom. Like Gabriel's trumpet, they served to awaken Tim and Johnny Damokles.

"What's dam' noise?" grunted the Greek.

"Target practice." Timmy was about to deliver further comments, but a rap at the door cut him loose. "Come in!" he barked. The door opened. The Leader entered.

"Ahhhh. Good morning, my dear guests." He rubbed his hands in a gesture that grated scales together. "We've a special _treat_ for you this morning. And perhaps, since you've displayed certain interests in _history_, you'd enjoy sharing in the history of the future."

"Would we?" queried Timmy.

"Belligerence is an ill-fitting trait of yours, Mister Gordon," said the Neptunian. "An inadequate one, I'll add."

"We're wasting time," interrupted Tim. "Get on with it!"

"Impetuous? You've a right to be. Get into your space suits and come outside. We're launching a special present for the Jovian System ... and feel that you gentlemen would enjoy it."

"I know," muttered Timmy.

"Of course, you do." The Leader was grinning as he spoke. "We've given your companion full opportunity to tell you about it. But come along ... unless you prefer a few rather ... delicate ... adjustments of the nervous system."

Johnny Damokles laughed. But beyond that, neither he nor Tim had anything further to say. They climbed into their space clothes and followed the Leader out into the Neptunian twilight.

V

In a natural amphitheater, walled in at one side by the cliff of the ravine and sheltered from the methane wind by the parapets of the Tsom fortress, stood the gigantic Neptunian bomb. Its impervium walls glowed with a faint, cold light. Regularly, down its sides from ten points, uneven streaks marked the course of Timmy's sensitizing fluid. Their exact placement was coincidentally fortunate. Each served to counteract the other, though the inward pressure they exerted must have been tremendous indeed.

The Leader was laughing in a repulsively reptilian way as he ascended his rostrum. Timmy and Damokles followed. "Observe," said the Leader, "the ingenious controls by which I guide the rocket-blasts from this remote station." He pointed to his control board, motioned Timmy and Johnny to stay away from it, and chuckled as they obeyed. Then, for a full hour, he delivered an impassioned and almost insane address to his followers.

As near as Timmy could judge, the Leader's address was a skilful bit of vituperation against the injustices done Neptune. But it was effective. A frenzied circle of lizard-men howled as he finished speaking. "And now," said the Leader, "we send our little present on his way."

He reached for the control board. The bomb shot heavenward.

Yes, it shot heavenward.

But the Leader _hadn't touched_ the controls.

Timmy's fingers anticipated him. A flick on his own secret control board had shot the bomb silently out toward the void. The Leader's finger froze in mid-air. His jaw dropped. He followed the bomb in its flight, and every muscle tightened, when it stopped dead at a point half a mile above Neptune. There the bomb hovered, unmoving. Its orbit, if an orbit you could call it, held it exactly above the center of the Tsom fortress. The Leader's finger jammed down on his control button.

Flames blasted from the bomb's jets. It whirled crazily on its own axis ... but was otherwise immovable.