The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vulcan's Workshop, by Harl Vincent

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Vulcan's Workshop

Author: Harl Vincent

Release Date: July 5, 2009 [EBook #29321]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VULCAN'S WORKSHOP ***

Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Vulcan's Workshop

By Harl Vincent

Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding Stories,
June, 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Savagely cursing, Luke Fenton reeled backward from the porthole, his
great hairy paws clapped over his eyes. No one had warned him, and he
did not know that total blindness might result from gazing too earnestly
into the sun's unscreened flaming orb, especially with that body not
more than twenty million miles distant in space.

[Sidenote: Mighty Luke Fenton swaggers defiantly in Vulcan's Workshop,
most frightful of Martian prisons.]

He did not know, in fact, that the ethership was that close: Luke had
not the faintest notion of the vast distances of the universe or of the
absence of air in space which permitted the full intensity of the
dazzling rays to strike into his optics unfiltered save by the thick but
clear glass which covered the port. He knew only that the sun, evidently
very near, was many times its usual size and of infinitely greater
brilliance. And he was painfully aware of the fact that the
fantastically enlarged and blazing body had seared his eyeballs and
caused the floating black spots which now completely obscured his
vision.

Stumbling in his blindness, he fell across the hard cot that was the
sole article of furniture in the cell he had occupied for more than two
weeks. Lying there half dazed and with splitting head, he cursed the
guard who had opened the inner cover of the port; cursed anew the
fish-eyed Martian judge who had sentenced him to a term in Vulcan's
Workshop.

Several of Luke's thirty-eight years had been spent in jails and sundry
other penal institutions devised by Earthman and Martian for the
punishment of o