stepped back and leered wickedly. He had
slung his dart gun over his shoulder and now produced a slender black
tube which he leveled at Luke's midsection.

"You walk now, Fenton," he snarled.

The Earthman rose upward as if he would leave the ground. Two or three
inches seemed added to his stature, and his muscles trembled from the
sudden release. He stepped a pace forward.

Then a light beam flashed forth from the black tube and Luke sagged down
with an astonished oath squeezed grunting from his throat. The swift
renewal of the inexplicable force had caught him off balance and he
dropped ignominiously to his knees.

"Ha!" gloated the Oriental. "It is thus we control the tough ones,
Fenton. I've given you a warning; now get up--and march!"

On the last word came blessed release and the return of Luke's strength.
He marched, meekly falling in with the file of new prisoners. He even
smiled through the red stubble of his beard. But black hatred was in his
heart, and renewed determination that he'd get away from this place
somehow--alive.

Time would show him the way.

* * * * *

Fenton's slow but retentive mind absorbed many things during the
succeeding few days. There was neither day nor night in this hellish
place--only the flame-lit mists; but they had clocks like those of
Earth, and you worked fourteen hours on the slope or in the smelter and
had the rest of each so-called day of twenty-four hours in which to eat
and sleep.

The food was coarse, but there was plenty of it. There was only water to
drink, lukewarm stinking stuff, doled out sparingly in rusty tin cups.
And, during the sleeping periods, you were required to take off the
gravity-insulated garments and sleep in huts with insulated floor
coverings. The charged floor, of course, allowed you to sleep without
being smashed flat on the uncomfortable cots. But they had you safe in
these sleeping huts; they took away your clothes and you couldn't step
out of the door without taking on the weight of a half a dozen men.

The Workshop itself was in a vast excavation from whose slopes a
silvery-veined ore was being removed. There were the blast furnace and
reduction plant on the one side and the convicts' huts and more
pretentious houses of the guards on the other. And the choking mists,
and the lurid flame behind. The stifling heat, Luke learned, too, that
every ninth day, with what they called the libration of Vulc