Bill Garson

“ Jon followed him through the sundered lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a moment to examine the wreckage of the lock. It had been punched full of holes as if it had been some soft cheese instead of a metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue said. "But that metal also is found on our world. It's probably the softest and most malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen, is it?—use it as protective metal." ”

“ He nudged Waltk, the huge Jovian who lay beside him. "Don't get restless, now," he mumbled through the mask. "We have hours to wait. And somebody might spot this patch of ground if you keep wriggling."
The Jovian grunted, wriggled again, and then was quiet.
"Men have escaped from The Hole before," Jarl Gare muttered, "but they were always caught before they got to the pearl-beds. Waltk's body and my brain will get us through."
He envisioned one of the huge Venusian pearls—so rare and so precious on Earth that it could buy a man's freedom, even from a murder charge. ”

“ Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship of the solar system. There was nothing that could withstand even the slight jolt of power given by the station cannon on any of the Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of the ship had changed. A bubble of metal, like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off the vessel and struck the rocket of the asteroid. ”

“ Far off in the steaming Venusian jungle, a band of the Chameleon men halted, lifting their mottled faces in the direction of the sound. Closer in, a four-man jungle patrol of Earthmen broke as one man into a run along the trail, their swift-moving bodies swishing the clouds into ragged streamers.
At the edge of the viscous river circling the island an armed guard slipped on his infra-red glasses and began searching his area carefully, his special light traveling slowly along the river and its near and opposite banks. ”

“ With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious unto death, relaxed and said, "All right, bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him, for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent. It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted. Then he drained the glass at a gulp. ”

“ It was only as he crawled out of the depths of the rocket power plant that he realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and strangers catch you unawares, you don't stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend upon your life. ”

“ Jarl Gare went through the card-catalog of his brain. The Chameleon men, the Venusian natives, evolved from reptiles who walked upright, were intelligent but could converse with men only through thought pictures. They were the guardians of the pearl-beds.
Their vision in their fog world was as good if not better than Waltk's. They needed no infra-red rays to penetrate the fog as the Earthmen did.
They had fought viciously against colonization by Earthmen. Despite punitive measures by Earth, they were not conquered and finally there had been an Earth-Venus treaty. ”

“ Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had been preaching preparedness as Earth flung her ships into the reaches of the solar system, taking the first long step toward the conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they argued. As strong and smart as man, many of them so transcending man in mental and inventive power that we must be prepared to strike the minute danger shows. ”

“ Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for greater exertion, increased the gravity pull in his space-suit boots as he neared the ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when he hit the lip of the ravine and began sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn course.
The power ray from behind ripped out great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But running naturally, bent close to the bottom of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare spots. ”

“ I have no weakness, Jarl grinned to himself, except pride and the Venusians seek out physical or mental weakness—not a character weakness. He remembered the oft-told tale of the Earthman whom the Venusians had frightened to death, but that was because he showed that fear physically. ”

“ On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized that the Steel-Blues also were waiting for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the blue ship where the service station atomic ray had struck. And they were doing a little target practice with plastic bubbles only a few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received a tumbler of the hemlock from the hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted. Drink it and your torture is over. You will die before your SP ship is destroyed. ”

“ What test was this the Chameleon men were planning?
Finally, the hands dropped from his eyes. He turned around. The oldster was pointing at a huge pile of the oyster shells.
A picture was in Jarl Gare's mind again. So they wanted him to find the shell? That was a fine test! All the shells were gray, and the pile to which the elder pointed was approximately twenty feet high. How could he find one gray shell among so many other gray ones?
He looked up and saw Waltk grinning at him, the stumps of his arms folded.
"How can I find it?" he asked Waltk. "One gray one among so many others?" ”

“ It was when he quaffed the new and stronger draught that Jon knew that his hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant that the citric acid was the diluting liquid. It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak he didn't feel much like moving around. He let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution. This Earthman at last is beginning to suffer." ”

“ A mile away Waltk halted, while Jarl Gare swept the forest behind him with the infra-red ray. He laughed. "They're still sitting there, waiting for us."
"Good," said Waltk. "It is easier to travel in the trees."
He resumed the role of carrier, and went plunging on.
The hours of flight through the trees seemed hardly to touch the reserves of the Jovian's strength.
But suddenly, abruptly, he halted.
"We cannot go further through the trees," he said to a puzzled Jarl Gare.
"The end of the forest ahead?" Jarl Gare asked. "That means we're less than a hundred Earth miles from the beds." ”

“ He thinks he's free. For the moment, sure, but when he meets the Venusians he's done. Good riddance. A tool should be discarded if there's no more use for it.
The gentle touch of Waltk's big hand on his shoulder awakened him. "The Chameleon men," Waltk whispered.
Hastily, Jarl Gare slipped on the glasses and seized the light. "Where?" he asked.
"They are in a circle about the tree."
Jarl Gare swerved the light around the tree. A hundred yards away was the edge of the circle. The infra-red showed them—dark, hunched figures.
"They just seem to be waiting for something," Jarl Gare said. ”

“ It causes joints to harden if even so much as a drop remains on it long. It eats away the metal, leaving a scaly residue which crumbles eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum. You die in your own atmosphere. However, we took the liberty of purifying it. There were dangerous elements in it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit deflated. Pressure was building up in the igloo. ”

“ Carefully they replaced the spongy earth. Then, with Jarl Gare in the lead, the pair walked upright, but quietly, to the great power-charged fence.
It went up twenty feet and down the same distance underground—Jarl Gare had learned this depth from a prisoner who had tried to dig his way out but failed and nearly drowned as liquid seeped into the hole he was digging.
The big Jovian, his thick-thewed body glimmering with sweat in the ground light, bent to pick up Jarl Gare's slight naked body.
"Wait," Jarl Gare warned. "We must wait until one of the river beasts start plunging." ”

“ Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep." The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping away.
The cylinder business began again. This time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying to figure out what it was. It had a familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before the SP ship arrived. ”

“ Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue. "I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered. It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his thoughts had to be directed outward, rather than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping lock of the invaders' space ship wondering how he could warn Earth. The Space Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at his service station in 21 days. But by that time he probably would be mouldering in the rocky dust of the asteroid. ”

“ Already our ship is equipped with a force field designed especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts quickly. They can delve deeper than the surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded, is it?—every once in a while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared lugging great sheets of plastic and various other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic igloo, smaller than the living room in the larger service station igloo. ”

“ But where he tapered from broad shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up and down. They had no legs, just appendages, many-jointed that stretched and shrank independent of the other, but keeping the cylindrical body with its four pairs of tentacles on a level balance. ”