ts
under his black prison jacket.

* * * * *

They were outside then and Luke essayed a deep breath, a breath that was
chokingly acrid in his throat.

"Waugh!" he coughed, and spat. One of the guards laughed.

Any foul epithet that might have formed on Fenton's lips was forgotten
in the sight that met his eyes. A barren and rugged terrain stretched
out from the landing stage, a land utterly desolate of vegetation and
incapable of supporting life. Pockmarked with craters and seamed with
yawning fissures from which dense vapors curled, it was seemingly devoid
of habitation. And the scene was visible only in the lurid half light of
flame-shot mists that hung low over all. In the all too near distance,
awesomely vast and ruddy columns of fire rose and fell with monotonous
regularity. For the first time, Luke experienced something of the
superstitious fear exhibited by even the most hardened criminals when
faced with a term at Vulcan's Workshop. That term, to them, meant horror
and misery, torture and swift death. And he, too, was ready to believe
it now.

He was prodded down an incline that led from the landing stage to the
rocks below. The guards from the ethership, he saw, remained behind on
the platform and there were new guards awaiting him below. Husky
fellows, these were, in strange bulky clothing and armed with the
highest powered dart guns. The other prisoners from the vessel were
already down there, a huddled and frightened mass--a squashed pile,
almost--silent now and watchful of their jailers.

* * * * *

"Come on, show some speed, tough guy!" a guard yelled from the foot of
the runway. "Think this is a reception?"

Another of the guards guffawed hoarsely, and Luke choked back the
blasting retort that rose in his throat. Plenty of time yet before he'd
be ready to make things hot for those birds.

The runway, he observed, was a strip of yielding metal that glowed
faintly with an unnatural greenish light. He was nearing its lower end
when the siren of the ethership shrieked and he heard the clang of the
outer door of its air-lock as it swung to its seat.

Then he stepped out to the smooth stone slab on which the nearest of the
guards was standing. Immediately it was as if a tremendous weight was
flung upon him, bearing him down until his knees buckled beneath him. He
was rooted to the spot by an enormous force which dragge