There’s a colossal fortress in the center, a gigantic tower of black metal.
They’d be likely, I imagine, to keep her there—guarded by weapons that could annihilate all the fleets of the System in an instant.”
“Anything else you know?” urged Jay Kalam, as the hunted eyes fled back into vacancy.
“No. Nothing else.”
“Wake up!
Think!
The System is at stake!”
He started.
“No—yes, there’s one thing I remember, though it won’t do you any good to warn you.
The atmosphere!”
“What about the atmosphere?”
“You saw that it’s reddish?”
“Yes.
What—isn’t it breathable?”
“It contains oxygen.
You can breathe it.
But it’s filled with the red gas.
It does the Medusae no harm—but it isn’t good for men.
Its an artificial organic gas, they told me when we talked.
They generated it to control the climate—to cut heat radiation at night.
They mean to fill the air of Earth with it, no doubt.
But it isn’t good for men…”
He collected himself with a visible effort.
“You remember that wound on your shoulder, John?
That was caused by the same red gas.
Squirted on you in liquid form.
The Medusa; have learned what it does to human beings.
The men of Eric’s expedition…”
The gaunt man shuddered.
“Their trouble came from just breathing this atmosphere.
It didn’t bother them at once, except for a slight discomfort.
But later there was a mental derangement.
Their flesh began to rot.
And there was a good deal of pain.
And then…”
“Your doctors treated me, after I was burned on Mars,” John Star broke in suddenly.
“What was that they used?”
“We had worked out a neutralizing formula. But we haven’t the ingredients on board.”
“We can live, though, for a time, in spite of it?”
“For a time,” he echoed dully.
“Individual reactions varied, but usually the worst complications were delayed for several months.”
“Then it doesn’t greatly matter.”
“No,” Adam Ulnar spoke with a dull and bitter emphasis.
“No, you’ll find death, if you manage to leave the ship, in a million quicker forms.
Life on this planet is very old, you know.
The strug-gje for survival has been severe.
The result is a fauna—and a flora— fit to live with the Medusae.
You’ll never survive, outside the ship.”
“But we’re going to try,” Jay Kalam informed him.
“The Purple Dream,” John Star announced a little later when they were all five gathered on the narrow deck just within the air-lock, “is lying on the bottom of a shallow sea.