The sentry groaned.
John Star silently restored him to unconsciousness with a trick he had learned at the Academy—one quick blow with the edge of his open hand.
His door swung open.
He stepped out to join Giles Habibula.
The short and massive body of the old Legionnaire seemed to quake with apprehension, but his thick hands were oddly sure and steady. Already he was feverishly busy at the door of Jay Kalam’s cell, with a bit of twisted green wire—the winding which had reinforced the club.
“Poor old Giles wasn’t always a lame and useless soldier in the Legion, lad,” he wheezed abstractedly.
“Things were different when he was young and bold—before mortal disaster overtook him, back on Venus, and he had to join the blessed Legion———”
That door let out Jay Kalam; the next gave freedom to Hal Samdu.
Breathless, John Star whispered,
“Now what?”
They had four minutes, before the guard would fail to report.
The great room that housed the cell-block was massively metal-walled, windowless.
It had one opening—with armed men waiting between the three locked doors across the single passage.
“Up!” said Jay Kalam, as urgently as he ever spoke.
“On top of the cells.”
John Star swarmed up the bars.
The others swiftly followed, Giles Habibula puffing, hauled by John Star from above, pushed by Hal Samdu beneath.
They reached the metal net that covered the second tier of cells, the white-painted metal ceiling still fifteen feet above.
“Now!” whispered Jay Kalam. “The ventilator.”
He pointed to the heavy metal grating in the ceiling above, from which a cool draft struck them.
“Your part, Hal!
If your strength was ever needed, it is now.”
“Lift me!” cried the giant, great hands ready.
They lifted him.
Puffing Giles Habibula and Jay Kalam stood on the netting, John Star, lightest of the four, on their shoulders, while huge Hal Samdu stood upon his.
The ventilator grille was strong, though it had been placed where men were not likely to reach it.
Hal Samdu’s immense hands closed about its bars; he strained; John Star heard mighty muscles cracking.
His breath came in short, laboring gasps.
“I can’t———” he sobbed.
“Not this way!”
“We’ve one minute longer, perhaps,” Jay Kalam told him softly.
The giant lifted himself from John Star’s shoulders, and doubled his body, planting one foot on each side of the grating, hanging by his arms.
“Catch him!” cried John Star.
Hal Samdu straightened, with his feet on the ceiling.
Strained metal snapped.
He fell down, head foremost, fifteen feet, the grate torn out in his hands.
The tube yawned black, above, a cold stream of air pouring down from it.
The three caught him in their arms.
A whirring from the door of the great room.
The lock mechanism was opening the inner valve.
In seconds, the guardsmen would come, to find why the speaking tube was silent.
“You first, John,” said Jay Kalam.
“The lightest.
Help us.”
They lifted him to the opening.
He hung his knees over the edge, and swung down his body, hands reaching.
Giles Habibula came first, wheezing, hoisted from beneath.
Then Hal Samdu, who lowered John Star, a living rope, so that Jay Kalam could catch his hands.
“Halt!” rang the order from the opening door.
“As you are! Or we fire to kill!”