by Harl Vincent
flunghim headlong.
* * * * *
Like a cat, he bounced to his feet, crouching with Chan Dai's dart gunat his shoulder. A strangely grotesque heap was at his feet--Tom Fuller.Off there in the thinning mist he saw a shadowy figure and he fired atit twice. Whether his darts found their mark he was never to know, for awall of white swept down suddenly to obscure his vision. Snow! Greatmassed flakes falling endlessly--the moisture of the mist crystallizedand closing in on him to hide him even more safely, than had the miststhemselves.
He was on his knees then at Fuller's side. A brilliant flash and ascreaming roar over amongst the rocks apprised him of the fact that theguard's dart had gone wide. And yet Fuller was down, moaning with pain.Luke tried to turn him over and found that his body had taken ontremendous weight. He was flattened, crushed to the rocky surface ofVulcan by the full force of its gravity!
"What the devil!" he grunted as he heaved and strained. "What'd they doto you, old man?"
With great effort he succeeded in turning the scientist face up. Then hesaw what had happened, and knew in a flash that Fuller had saved himfrom the singing dart whose energy was making a sizzling puddle of thestones where it had landed. The missile, in passing, had carried awaythe belt and part of the fabric of Tom's garment--carried away thecapsule and the radium that energized it. Made the thing worse thanuseless. And Fuller had done this for him; he had flung himself uponLuke to shove him out of the line of fire ... risking his own lifegladly ... lucky the deadly dart had missed his body, but....
* * * * *
"You go on, Fenton," the scientist was whispering through lips that wereblue and stiff. "Leave me here. I'm licked. But you can carry on thework; go to my friends and tell them--everything. Tell them what you sawback there--tell them----"
"Shut up!" Luke's words were softly growled. There was a new and utterlyunaccountable huskiness in his voice as he straddled the prone body andlocked his strong fingers underneath. "You ain't gonna be left behind,"he grunted. "We're goin' on, brother, together."
His back straightened and Fuller was swung clear of the ground. His hugebiceps tensed and the scrawny scientist was in the air, up and above thebowed head, then let down gently to rest across the broad shoulders ofLuke Fenton. Fuller hung there, bent double by the immense weight ofhim, crushed to painful contact with the taut muscles that carried thestrain.
On Earth, Fuller might have tipped the scales at a scant one hundred andthirty pounds; now his sagging body was a load in excess of sevenhundredweight. With that load upon him, and glorying in the effort itcost, Luke staggered on toward the triple red glow, which, even in theblinding whiteness of the snowfall, marked the location of the columnsof fire.
That all feeling had left his limbs in the deep-biting cold meantnothing; that his lungs were near bursting under the terrific strainmeant even less. Luke Fenton had found a man. One he would fight for,not against. And, miraculously, he had found himself.
* * * * *
After that there was a blur of interminable torture. Reeling andstumbling, his leg and back muscles shot through with stabbing pain asthe frost worked slowly upward, Luke plodded doggedly ahead. Anoccasional shout came from far behind where the guards still searchedthe rocky plateau.
Across his great shoulders, Luke's burden was a dead weight, ofcorpselike rigidity and stillness. Yet Luke clung to it tenaciously,disposing the drooping leaden limbs as comfortably as possible by thejudicious spreading of his own brawny arms.
Fuller, he was sure, had not long to live in any event. X.C. hadalready progressed to such a point that it was hardly possible he couldrecover. And yet, these smart guys Luke always had detested--the doctorsand surgeons and such--they might be able to do something for the poordevil. Anyway, he determined, he'd get the scientist to his friends deador alive, and he'd see to it that they treated him right. If theydidn't....
The red glow was suddenly very bright and a silvery metallic shapeloomed up before him in the whiteness. An ethership! Luke tried to callout but his bellowing voice was gone; only faint gurgling sounds camefrom his throat. He pushed forward with a savage summoning of his lastounce of energy and Fuller's weight was that of a mastodon upon him. Thecurved hull of the vessel was overhead when he slipped and fell to oneknee in the thick carpet of snow.
Luke saw them then, a dozen strangers running from the open air-lock ofthe ship. In uniform, some of them--government officials of Earth andMars. Damn them, it was a trap!
Knowing vaguely that they had surrounded him, he let Fuller slip fromhis shoulders and lowered him gently to the snow. Lurching to his feet,he stood swaying above the scientist's body, ready to defend thehelpless man against any who came to take him. Defiant curses died inhis paralyzed throat as darkness swooped down to blot out allconsciousness. His steel-sinewed body, beaten at last, slumpedprotectingly over the lanky form of his new-found friend.
* * * * *
When Luke next saw the light he stared long and hard at immaculate whitewalls and ceiling that shut him in. A gentle purring was in his ears andhe knew he was in an ethership that was under way. He lay weak andhelpless beneath snowy covers, on an iron hospital bed.
There were voices in the room, hushed, awed voices, and Luke moved hishead painfully to stare across the room. Fuller, he saw, was stretchedon another cot, pale and still. And a white-clad nurse was there,bending over him, talking softly to a doctor. The words that passedbetween them brought enlightenment to Luke--and more. They brought a newelation, and understanding, and hope.
When the doctor and nurse had left, Luke lay for a long time with histhoughts. There was a man--Tom Fuller. Unafraid, as an agent of aspecial governmental committee investigating prison conditions he hadvolunteered to get the evidence on Vulcan's Workshop. And he had doneit, even though it was almost certain that his own life was to be theprice. He had dared the misery and hardship, dared X.C. and thehorrible death it brought, that this hellhole of Vulcan might beexposed, that it might be wiped out of existence by governmentagreement. Vulcan's Workshop, where the gold dust of a certain politicalclique, brought torture and disease and extinction to hapless prisonerswho might otherwise be remade into useful members of society by the useof scientific methods--all this was to be no more.
Fuller had succeeded where many others had failed. And Fuller was not todie. Only one of his lungs had been affected by X.C. and this not tooextensively to respond to treatment. Many months of careful attendancewould be required, and many more months of convalescence. But Fuller,they were sure, would live, Luke gloated.
From what he had heard, Luke gathered that there was to be no troubleabout his own pardon. Oddly enough, this gave him no satisfaction.Something had happened to him--inside. For the first time he realisedhis debt to society and would have preferred that just sentence becarried out upon him. But not in that place, not in Vulcan's Workshop!Luke shuddered.
* * * * *
And lying there, he swore a mighty oath that the remainder of his lifewas to be devoted to entirely different pursuits. It was not too late toface about, not too late to learn. If Fuller would help him, he _would_learn. He had acquired a healthy respect for the book-learning heformerly ridiculed, and he wanted some of it for himself--as much as hecould get. His old creed was forgotten, and his bitterness vanished.
"Luke!" At the scientist's husky whisper he turned his head. Fuller wasgazing at him with wide, solemn eyes.
"Thanks, Luke," the thin lips murmured.
"Thanks yourself. Where'd we be right now if it wasn't for your radium?"
There was silence as they regarded one another.
"I need you, Luke," Fuller whispered then, "in my laboratory back home.I'll be laid up for a long time, you know, and there's much to be done.Your brawn and my brain--we'll both profit. What do you say to that,Fenton, will you do it?"
<
br /> Luke grinned. "Will I? Just watch me!"
Then, with a queer lump choking him, Luke looked away. He could think ofno words to suit the occasion; he couldn't think at all somehow.
Blissfully, he fell asleep.