 CHAPTER IX. INTO THE ENCLOSURE. In the torture chamber Dex wavered slowly back to consciousness to get the growing impression that he was being immersed in a bath of liquid fire. Burning intolerable pain assailed him with increasing intensity as his senses clarified. At last he groaned and opened his eyes, for the moment not knowing where he was nor how he had come to be there. He saw strange torture instruments and tall monstrosities with pumpkin-shaped heads surrounding him closely in a semi-circle, and staring at him out of great dull eyes. Remembrance came back with a rush, and he gathered his muscles to spring out the hateful figures. But he could not move. At waist and throat, at wrists and ankles, were hoops of metal. He closed his eyes again while the burning waves of invisible fire shot through him recurrently from head to foot. Dully he wondered that he was still alive. His last recollection had been of the Rogan leader pointing his shock-tube full at him, his shapeless countenance working with murderous fury. However, alive he was, and most unenviably so. His hands, circumscribed to a few inches of movement by the bonds on his wrists, felt the smooth substance at his back, and with a thrill of horror he realized his position. He was crucified against the metal slab on which the slave had writhed in agony a short half hour ago. Again he strained and tugged vainly to get free. Off to one side, pressed back against a huge glass experimental tank, he saw the beautiful Greca, her eyes wide with horror, and caught her frantic pleading message to her great white one. The Rogan leader, squealing and grimacing, advanced toward the victim on the metal plate. One of the long arms went out and a sucker-desk was pressed to Dex's cheek. Dex quivered at the loathsome contact of that soft and slimy substance, then set his jaws to keep from groaning as the disc was jerked away, to carry with it a fragment of skin and flesh. Gingerly, the tall leader felt the twitching blackened stomp of his blasted arm. Dex grinned mirthlessly at that. He'd struck one or two blows in his own defense anyhow. At sight of the earthman's grin, an expression of defiance and grim joy that needed no interpreting to be understandable, the Rogan leader fairly danced with rage. His long arm went out to the switch beside the plate, and pulled it down another notch, just a little, not nearly to the current that had torn at the slave. At the increased torment resulting from that slight movement of the regulating lever, Dex yelled aloud in spite of all his will-power. It seemed as though his whole body were about to burst into self-generated flame. Every cell and fiber of him seemed on the verge of flying apart. He could feel his eyes start from his head, could feel every hair on his scalp stand up as though discharging electric sparks. A minute or two of that and he would go mad. He cried out again and twisted helplessly in his bonds, and then the terrible torture stopped. The Rogan had not touched the switch, yet whatever sort of current it was that charged the plate was abruptly clicked off, as though someone at a distance had cut a wire or thrown a master switch. Simultaneously with its ceasing, an invisible, crushing sea seemed to envelop everything. Dex felt his body sag against his mental bonds, as if it had been changed to lead. Before him the Rogans, who had been crowding closer to watch gloatingly each grimace he made, shot doorward as though their pipe-stem legs had been swept from under them. The leader fell on the stump of his seared arm, and a deafening squeal of rage and pain came from his little mouth. His tube fell from his grasp and rolled over the floor half a dozen yards away from him. Amazed, observing the stricken creatures only dimly through a haze of pain, Dex saw them struggle vainly to get up again, and heard them chattering excitedly to themselves. For the moment, in the face of this queer phenomenon, the prisoner seemed to be forgotten, and Dex was quick to seize the momentary advantage. Greca, he called, the tube! There on the floor! The girl raised her head quickly, and followed his imploring gaze. Laboriously she started for the tube. At the same instant the Rogan leader began to feel around him for his lost weapon. Not finding it, he raised his head and glanced about for it. He saw the girl making her way toward it, and, with a squeak of terror, began to crawl toward it himself. He was not quick enough. The girl, though not nearly as active under the increased pull of gravity as a person of earth might be, was yet more agile than the Rogans. And she was the faster mover in this tortuous, snail-like race. While the Rogan leader was still several feet away, she retrieved the shock tube. Kill him, beg Dex, and all the rest of the filthy creatures! With feminine horror of the thing that faced her, Greca hesitated an instant, a hesitation almost long enough to be fatal. Then, just as the Rogan leader was reaching savagely out for her, she leveled the tube at him and turned it to its full power. One last thin squeal came from the Rogan's mouth, a squeal that cracked abruptly at its height. What had been its gangling body drifted up in inky smoke. The others, called Dex, quick before they get their weapons! Greca swept the death-tube in a short arc in front of her, over the bodies of the remaining Rogans, as if spraying plants with a hose. One after another, toppling in swift succession like grotesque falling dominoes, the creature sagged to the floor and melted away. That one small part of Jupiter's red spot, at least, was cleared of Rogan population. Long shutters racked Greca's body, and her lips were a bloodless line in her pallid face. But she did not go into womanly hysterics or swoon at the slaughter it had been her lot to inflict. Moving as quickly as she could, she went to the metal slab and began, with shaking fingers, to undo the fastenings that held Dex prisoner. "'Good girl,' said Dex, patting her satiny bare shoulder as he stood free again. "'You're a sport and a gentleman. You don't understand the terms? They're earth words, Greca. That carry the highest praise a man can give a woman. But let's get out of here before another gang comes and takes us again. Where can we hide?' "'I don't know any hiding places,' confessed Greca despairingly. The Rogan swarm everywhere. We will be seen the moment we try to leave here.' "'Well, we'll hunt for a hole anyway,' said Dex.' He assayed to walk. What with the tenancy of his muscles to jerk and collapse with the aftermath of the torture he had endured, and the sudden and inexplicable increase in gravity that bore him down, he made heavy going of it. "'First we'll go up and get brand.' "'Yes, yes,' said Greca, a soft glow in her clear blue eyes. Let us go quickly.' She started toward the door, panting with the effort of moving. But Dex halted an instant to stoop and pick up another of the tubes. "'We might as well have one of these apiece,' he said. "'You've proved you have the grit to use one, and maybe the dirty rats will think twice about rushing us if we each have a load of death in our hands.' They made their way out of the torture laboratory and up the incline to the street level, and it was just as they reached this that the burden of gravity under which they staggered was lifted from their shoulders as quickly as it had descended on them. Dex raised his arms just in time to fend his body from a collision with the wall in front of him. "'Now what?' he exclaimed. Greca lifted her hand for silence, inclined her head, and listened intently. As she did so, Dex heard the same noise her quick ears had caught an instant before his, a distant pandemonium of ringing gongs and siren sheiks, and squealing cries of a multitude of agitated rogons. "'What, the devil?' began Dex. But again Greca raised her hand to silence him and listened once more. As she listened her sea-blue eyes grew wider and wider with horror. Then frantically she began to race down a long corridor away from the street door. Dex hastened to follow her. "'What is it?' he demanded, when he had caught up to her flying little feet. "'This is not the way up to the room where Brand, your friend is not there,' she interrupted. She explained swiftly, distractedly. During the shouts of the rogons I learned that he got into the great dome building somehow, and then was driven into the pen of the—' Dex could not get the next term she used, but her telepathic message of the peril she mentioned formed in his mind clearly enough. "'He got a flashing brain-picture of a great high-walled yard with a monster in it, of the kind he had caught a close-range glimpse a short while before. Also he saw a blurred, tiny figure running from wall to wall that was Greca's imagining of Brand and his efforts to escape the enormous beast. "'Good heavens,' groaned Dex, penned in with one of the things they showed me while I was stretched out on the rack. "'Are you sure, Greca?' she nodded and tried to run faster. "'This way,' she gasped, turning down a passage to the left that ended in a massive metal door. This leads to the enclosure. Oh, if only we can be in time!' Her slim fingers tore at a massive bolt that secured the door. "'Here,' said Dex, wrenching it open for her. And they stepped out into thin sunlight, onto a hard surface of reddish ground that was crisscrossed with innumerable rounded furrows, like the tracks old-fashioned fifty passenger airplane wheels used to make on soft landing-fields. Greca shrieked and pointed to the far end of the enclosure. Down there, flattened against the wall of the dome building, was Brand, and waddling toward him with a tread that caused the ground to quiver was a mate to the hideous creature the Rogans had used to terrify Dex in the torture chamber. Dex leveled the tube he was carrying, swore, hid it frenziedly with his hand. "'How do you work this damn thing, Greca? Oh, like that. There. See if that puts a sting in your hide!' The distant monster stopped its advance toward Brand. A raw white spot, as big as a dinner plate, leaped into being on one of its enormous hind legs. It whirled with an ear-splitting hiss to see what thing was causing such pain in its rear. The frightful head whipped back at the end of the long neck to nuzzle at the seared spot. Then the giant lizard turned toward Brand again. A second time Dex pressed the central coil that formed the handle of the tube, as Greca had showed him how to do. A second time the rays shot down the field to flick a chunk of flesh weighing many pounds from the monster's flank. And this time it definitely abandoned the quarry behind it. With a scream like the keening of a dozen steam-wistles, it charged back over its tracks toward the distant pygmies that were inflicting such exasperating punishment on it. Dex swept the tube before him in a short half-circle. A smoking gash appeared suddenly in the vast four quarters of the monster. It stopped abruptly, its clawed feet plowing along the ground with the force of its momentum. An instant it stood there. Then, with its head swinging from side to side and lowered so that its looped neck dragged on the reddish-dusty ground, it began to back away from the source of its hurt, bellowing and hissing its rage and bewilderment. Brand shouted Dex, this end! Run, while I hold the thing off! Brand began to race down the long enclosure ten feet to a leap. The great lizard darted after him, like a cat after an escaping mouse, but a flick of the tube sent it bellowing and screaming back to its corner. Dex gasped, Brand, thank God! For a moment he leaned, wide and shaken against the wall. Then Greca caught his hand in both of hers and Dex put his arm supportingly around his shoulder. They retreated back through the doorway behind them and slid the bolt across the metal door. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of The Red Hell of Jupiter by Paul Ernst This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Red Hell of Jupiter. Chapter 10. The Tank Scheme Thank God you came when you did, repeated Brand. Then, with a moment in which, figuratively, to get his feet back on earth, the wonder of Dex's appearance struck him. How did you manage to get away? He asked. I was sure. I thought, when they dragged you out of the tower room, I wouldn't see you again. Rapidly, Dex gave an account of his ordeal in the torture chamber, telling Brand in a few words how he had attempted to win free of the Rogans, how he had almost succeeded, only to be caught again and clamped to the death-plate on the wall. But just as the big fellow was about to cook me for good and all, he concluded, something happened to the current and to the gravity at the same time. That was when I pulled the lever in the dome-building, exclaimed Brand. He told of what had befallen him in the Rogan powerhouse. That levered, Dex, he said swiftly. It's the keynote of the whole business. It absolutely controls the pull of gravity, and Lord knows what else besides. If we could only get at it again. Perhaps we could not only shut it off so that Jupiter's pull would function again, but also reverse the process so its gravity would be increased. Think what that would mean. Every Rogan in the red empire stretched out and immovable, possibly crushed in by his own weight. It's a wonderful thought, sighed Dex, while Grecoise glowed with a sudden hope for her enslaved race. But I don't see how we could ever! He stopped and glanced in alarm down the passage behind them. Grecoise and Brand, hearing the same soft noise whirled to look too. Far down the passage, just sneaking around the bend, was a group of Rogan guards, each armed with a death-tube. Back to the pen, cried Brand. He slid the bolt and jerked the door open. They rushed into the walled enclosure again, the slamming of the door behind them, cutting off the enraged squeals of the Rogans. This isn't going to mean anything but a short delay, I'm afraid, said Brand, clenching his fists in an agony of futility. They'll be in here in a minute and get us like trapped rats. Not before we get a lot of them, said Dex grimly. But that isn't enough, man. We don't want to die, no matter how decently we do it. We've won free and stayed free this long. Now, somehow, we've got to reach our ship and get back to earth to warn them of the danger that hides here for our planet. He strode tensely up and down, smacking his fist into his palm. The lever, he exclaimed. That lever! It's our only answer. If we could get to it. But how can we? We couldn't break into the dome, now the Rogans are on the watch for us, with anything less than a charge of explosives. Or a tank. God, how I'd like to have an old-fashioned fifty-ton army tank here now! Greka exclaimed aloud as Brand's fleeting mental picture of one of Earth's unwieldy, long-discarded war-tanks registered on her brain. There is the great beast there, she said, hesitantly, pointing a slim forefinger at the huge lizard that had backed into a far corner and was regarding them out of dull, savage eyes. Then she shook her head. But that is impossible, impossible! The men stared at her with the dawning realization in their minds. Then they gazed at each other. Of course, said Brand. Of course! Greka, you're marvellous! Wish we had a tank? Why, we've got one! A four-legged mountain of meat that ought to be able to plow through the side of that dome like a battering ram through cardboard. But it's not possible! replied Greka, her head dropping dejectedly. My people, as driven slaves, till the fields with great animals that were trapped in the surrounding jungles. They harness other great animals to haul burdens. But none of the beasts are like this one. This kind cannot be tamed or harnessed. It is too ferocious. It is used only as a scourge of fear to crush us into complete submission. Can't be tamed? Brand said. We'll see about that. Come on, Dex. Just a minute, said Dex. He flattened against the wall, motioning them to do the same. Then he leveled his tube at the door. Slowly, cautiously, the door began to swing back, and the rogan that Dex had heard fumbling with the bolt stuck his huge head out to locate the escaped prisoners. Dex pressed the release coil of his tube. Without a sound, the rogan slumped to the ground, a smoking cavity in its shoulders at the spot where its head had been set. In an instant the body too disappeared, an upward coiling wisp of black smoke marking its vanishing. Another rogan, tiptoeing out, met the same fate and another, and then the door was banged shut again and the bolt grounded to place on the inside. That'll teach him to be careful how he try to rush us from that door, said Dex through set teeth. Now let us see if that tank scheme of ours can be worked. He picked up a tube dropped by one of the rogans and handed it to Brand, showing him which coil to press to get full force as Greca had in turn informed him. Down the field, commanded Brand, we'll go about thirty yards apart and try to herd this brute back through the walls of the dome building. Once it's inside, we'll try to rush to the lever before the rogans can down us and jam the thing past its terminal peg and into reverse action. I don't know that there is a reverse to it, but we can try. Greca, dear, the girl started at the warmth of his thought and a faint pink rose to her pale cheeks. You'd better stay by my side. Your place as hostage priestess of your people wouldn't save you if those devils catch you now. Besides, you can keep your tube leveled at the doorway as we go and discourage any rogans who might pluck up courage to try coming out again. They started down the field toward the nightmare thing that snarled and hissed in its corner. On one side of the big enclosure walked Brand, with Greca close beside him, glancing continuously over her shoulder at the rear door and holding her tube in readiness to check any charge the rogans might attempt to make from the tower building. On the other side, keeping an equal pace, advanced decks. With tubes of death as whips and with death for themselves set as the stake for which they gambled, they went about their attempt to drive the brainless monster before them through the solid wall of the dome building. And there followed what was probably the strangest animal act the universe has ever witnessed. The first thing to do was to route the enormous lizard out of the corner where sullen fear had sent it squatting. Decks contrived to do that by standing next to the wall at its side and sending a searing raid that just touched the scaly, tremendously thick hide. The monster bellowed deafeningly and, with a spot smoking on its flank, waddled sideways to the center of the field. Its head and swaying long neck faced the earthmen, and its back was against the wall of the dome building. To that extent, at least, they had the creature placed, but they soon found that the struggle had only just begun. Bran got far enough around to focus his tube on the tip of a huge tail in an effort to swing the gigantic thing about. There was an unearthly shriek from the colossal beast and a foot and a half of its tail disappeared. Careful, called Decks, his jaw set and grim as the monster lashed out in its wrath. If you bore in too long with that tube, there'll be nothing left of our tank but a cloud of smoke. Bran nodded wordlessly, walking on the balls of his feet like a boxer, holding himself ready to swerve the thing should it charge them. Which, next instant, it did. With a whistling bellow, it gathered its tons of weight and thundered with incredible quickness at the gnats that were stinging its flanks and tail. Desperately, Bran played the tube across the vast chest, scoring a smoldering gash in the scale-covered flesh just above the gash Decks had seared a few moments before. Sorry, old fellow, Bran muttered to the screaming beast. We hate to bait you like this, but it has to be done. Come on now, do that wall behind you and give us a chance at the lever. But through the wall behind it the vast creature, not unnaturally, refused to go. It darted from side to side, backward and forward, up to the wall, only to back bewilderedly away from it, and constantly the tubes flicked their blistering, maddening rays along its monstrous sides and tail as the earthmen tried to guide it into the wall. Hope there's enough left of it to do the trick, said Bran, white-lipped. The monster was smoking in a dozen spots now, and several of the hump-like scales on its back had been burned away, till the vast spine looked like a giant saw that was missing a third of its teeth. God, I'm thinking we'll kill it before we can drive it through that wall. Greca nodded soberly, keeping her eyes on the distant door to their rear. Twice that door had been opened, and twice she had directed the death-rays into its opening to mow down the gangling figures behind it. But she had said nothing of this to her man. He was busy enough with his own task. The door to the dome, Dex shouted suddenly. But Bran merely nodded, even as a discharge from his tube annihilated the Rogan that had appeared in the doorway before them. He had seen that door stealthily opening even before Dex had. It had better be soon, Dex, he called. Rogan's in front of us, Rogan's behind us, and, look out, on your side of the fence there! Dex whirled in time to pick off a grotesque, pipe-like figure that had suddenly appeared on the broad wall of the enclosure. Then he turned to the frenzied problem of driving the monster through the building wall. The thing's going mad, Bran, he cried, his voice high-pitched and brittle. Watch out! It was only too evident that this statement was true. The baited monster, harried blindly this way and that, hounded against the blank wall behind it by something that bit chunks of living flesh out of its legs and sides, was losing whatever instinctive mental balance it ever had. Its dimly functioning brain, probably no larger than a walnut in that gigantic skull, ceased more and more to guide it. With a rasping screen that set the earthmen's teeth on edge, it charged for the wall on Dex's side. Dex just managed to swerve it with a blast from the tube so prolonged that half its great lower jaw fell away. At this the titanic thing went wholly, colossally mad. It whirled toward Bran, jerking around again as a searing on that side jarred its dull sensory nerves, then headed at last straight toward the stone wall of the dome building. With the rays from both tubes flicking it like monstrous spurs, it charged insanely toward the bulge of the circular wall. With all its tons and tons of weight it crashed against the stonework. There was a thunderous crackling noise and the wall sagged in perceptibly while the metal roof bent to accommodate the new curvature of its supporting beams. The monstrous lizard, jerked off its huge legs by the impact, staggered up and retreated toward the two men. But again the maddening pain in its hind quarters sent it careening toward the building wall. This time it raised high up on its hind legs in a blind effort to climb over it. God! It must be five stories tall! ejaculated Bran. Thunderingly its four legs came down on the edge of the roof. There was another deafening crash of stone and shrieking of torn metal. Just under the cornice the wall sagged away from the roof and the top rows of heavy stone blocks slithered inward. Again shouted Bran. His tube was pointing almost continuously now at the metal door leading from the dome building. The rogons inside, at the shocks that were battering down a section of their great building, were all trying to get out to the yard at once. In a stream they rushed for the doorway. And in loathsome heaps they fell at the impact of the ray and shriveled to nothingness on the bombarded threshold. Once more, Bran repeated, his voice hoarse and tense. And as though the monster heard and understood it rushed again with all its vast weight and force against the wall in a mad effort to escape the things that were blasting the living flesh from its colossal framework. This charge was the last. With a roaring crash a section of the building thirty yards across went back and down, leaving the massive roof to sag threateningly on its battered trusswork. It was as though the side of an ant-heap had been ripped away. Inside the domed building hundreds of rogons ran this way and that on their elongated legs, squealing in their staccato, high-pitched tongue. With blind fury the mad monster charged in through the gaping hole it had battered for itself. In all directions the rogons scattered. Then an authoritative tall figure with a tube in each of its four sucker-discs whipped out a command and pointed to the great coils which lay immediately in the berserk monster's path. The command restored some sort of order. Losing their fear of the beast in their greater fear of the damage it might do, the rogons massed to stop it before it could demolish the rogue heart of power. At this point Bran saw an opening of the kind he had been praying for. The rogons had retreated before the terrific charge of the monster in such a way that the space between its vast bulk and the control-board was clear. "'After me,' he shouted to Dex, "'one of us has got to reach that lever while the creature's still there to shield us.' The two earthmen dashed through the jagged hole in the wall and raced to the control-board just as the huge lizard, a smoky mass, sank to the floor. Bran gazed almost fearfully at the lever slot. Was there a reverse to the gravity-control action? There was room in the slot for the lever to be pulled down below the neutral point, if that meant anything. Behind them the great bulk of the dead lizard was disappearing with incredible quickness under the rays of the tubes directed on it. Now the pumpkin-shaped heads on the opposite side were visible through a fleeting glimpse of a skeleton that was like the framework of a skyscraper. And now the colossal bones themselves were melting, while over everything hung a pall of greasy black smoke. "'Hurry for God's sake,' gasped Dex. Bran threw down the lever till it stuck. At once that invisible ocean poured crushingly over them, throwing them to their knees and sweeping the rogons flat on their hideous faces, just as half a hundred tubes were flashing down to point at the earthmen. "'More if you can,' grated Dex, whirling this way in that and spraying the masked rogons with his death-dealing tube. Dozens went up in smoke under that discharge, but other dozens remained to raise themselves laboriously and slowly leveled their suddenly ponderous weapons at the earthmen. Bran said his jaw and threw all his weight on the lever. It bent a little, caught at the neutral point, and then jammed down an appreciable distance beyond it. Instantly the blue streamers that had stopped their humming progress from coil to coil with the movement of a switch to neutral, started again in reverse direction. And instantly the invisible ocean pressed down with appalling, devastating force. Greca and Bran and Dex were flattened to the floor as if by blankets of lead, and the scattered rogons about them ceased all movement whatever. "'Oh!' sobbed Greca, fighting for breath. "'Oh!' "'We can't stand this,' panted Dex. "'We fixed the rogons all right, but we fixed ourselves, too. That lever has to go up a bit.' Bran nodded, finding his head almost too heavy for his neck to move. Sweat beaded his forehead, sweat that trickled heavily off his face like drops of liquid metal. With a tremendous struggle he got to his knees beneath the master switch. There he found it impossible to raise his arms, but leaning back against the control board and so getting a little support he contrived to lift his body up enough to touch the downslanting lever with his head and move it back along its slot a fraction of an inch. The giant coils hummed a note lower, and some of the smashing weight was relieved. "'That does it, I think,' Bran panted, his voice husky with exhaustion and triumph. He began to crawl laboriously toward the nearest street exit. "'On our way,' he said vibrantly, "'to the spaceship. We leave for Earth at once.' "'Slowly, fighting the sagging weight of their bodies, the two earthmen inch their way to the street, helping Greca as they went. Among the sprawled forms of the rogons they crept, with great dull eyes rolling helplessly to observe their progress, and with feeble squeals of rage and fear and malediction following their slow path. On the street a strange and terrible sight met their eyes. Strune over the metal paving like wheat stalks crushed flat by a hurricane were thousands of rogons. Not a muscle of their pipe-like arms or legs could they move. But the gravity that crushed them rigidly to the ground did not quite hold motionless the shorter and more sturdily built slaves. Among the thousands of squealing, panting rogons that lay as though paralyzed on the metal paving crawled equal thousands of Greca's enslaved people, their eyes flamed with fanatic hate. And methodically, not knowing what had caused their loathed masters to be stricken helpless, and not caring as long as they were helpless, the slaves were seeking out the shock tubes that here and there had fallen from the clutch of rogan guards. Already many had found them, and everywhere gangling, slimy bodies were melting in oily black smoke that almost instantly vanished in thin air. As it was in the streets and in the great square in the center of which rested the earthmen's ship, just so they knew was it being repeated all over the Red Empire. Slowly crawling, fiercely exulting slaves were exterminating the tyrannous things that had held them so long in dreadful bondage. Before the sun should set on another flashing Jovian day there would be no rogan left in the Red Spot. And so it ends, said Brandt, with a great sigh. He moved over beside Greca and touched her lovely bare shoulders. They were shaking convulsively, though shoulders, and she had buried her face in her hands to keep from gazing at the ghastly carnage. Brandt pressed her to him. It's terrible, yes, but think what it means. The knell of all the rogans been sounded to-day. As soon as the secret of these death-tubes has been analyzed by our science and provided against, my friend and I will return from earth with a force that shall clear the universe of the slimy devils. Meanwhile your people are safe here, with the gravity what it is no rogan attacking hordes can land. They crawled torturously over the square to the spaceship. Brandt turned again to Greca, and now, in his eyes, was a look that needed no language of mind or tongue for its complete expression. Will you come to earth with me, Greca, and stay by my side till we return to set your people in power again? Greca shook her head slowly, reluctantly. My people need leaders now. I must stay and help direct them in their new freedom. But you, you'll come back with the others from earth. Try and stop him, Grindex, and try and stop me, too. From what I know now of the way they grow him on your satellite, his eyes rested on Greca's beauty with an admiration that turned her to rosy confusion. I'd say I'd found the ideal spot to settle down in. Brandt laughed. He's answered for me, too, and now a salute that is used on earth to express a promise. He kissed her, to her utter astonishment and perplexity, but to her dawning pleasure. Good-bye for a little while. The two earthmen hoisted themselves heavily over the sill of the control room of their ship and crawled inside. They secured the trapdoor and turned on the air rectifiers. Brandt moved to the controls, waved to Greca, who was smiling at him through the glass panel, and pointed the ship on its triumphant four hundred million mile journey home. The End of the Red Hell of Jupiter by Paul Ernst