Birek helped them up onto the catwalk. They were moving, now. It took only a few seconds. MacVickers divided them into two groups.

"You men that are sheathed go first, to help block the charge. It'll be your job to take the Jovies out of the way. Quick, before this fog settles enough so they can see to focus on us."

They split up, running along the walk that connected with the control boxes, hurdling the bodies of Jovians suffocated in oil. Presently the glassite door loomed before them.

Birek and the dying Earthman led MacVickers' party. The Venusian wrenched open the door. And MacVickers felt his heart stop.

There were three Europans instead of one. The guards had come down from above.

"Get them out here," he said. "Out into the oil."

A wave of shuddering agony tossed through him. The Jovies were using their powerful hand-tubes. Only the glassite walls partially protected them.

The fog began to whip past him. He groaned, thinking that it was going. And then he put his head in his hands and wept with incredulous, thankful joy.

The oily mist was being sucked into the box by powerful ventilators. MacVickers remembered Loris saying, "They get the pure air. Our ventilator tubes are only a few inches wide."

He laughed. The bell swooped sickeningly. Somewhere off in the fog he heard screams and shouts and Pendleton's voice roaring triumph.

He thought, "We never could have done it if the tide hadn't come and made the Jovies seasick."

He laughed again. It tickled him that seasickness should lose a war.

IV

They went in and up the ladders into the sealed storage space next the convict quarters. There was a huge cylinder of lead suspended over the mouth of the duct from the extractor.

"They must collect the stuff when they bring oil and supplies," said Loris. "Well, MacVickers, what happens to us now?"

MacVickers looked at them, the lines deep in his face. "We all agree, don't we, that there's no hope of escape? If we wait until the next supply ship comes and try to take it, we lose the chance of doing—well, call it our duty if you want to. That is, to wreck their only source of the explosive that's 

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