"All of you volunteered to come. Now that you're here, you are part of our scheme of things and you will work as hard as you did in the swamp. It is dangerous work, but you will have ample remuneration. Idlers and grumblers will be done away with, I promise you. Your lives were forfeit in the swamp, and that is not altered by your being on Vulcan." She paused as if waiting for objections, but every man was silent.
"Very well; Luhor will explain later what you're here for. Meanwhile you are free to go anywhere you like within the city, but be ready to work about eight earth-hours from now." As abruptly as she had come, Commander Cynthia Marnik turned and was gone.
The men smoked and talked among themselves, speculating what their tasks might be. The memory of the Prison Swamp was too recent for them to care much.
Mark rose quietly and stepped out of the dining-room. He'd noticed that Aladdo was absent from the meal, and he wondered if his Venusian friend was still an 'honored guest.' Deciding to inspect the city, Mark tried to retrace his steps to those buildings where he had heard the blast furnaces; but at the first cross-corridor Ernest Carston stepped out and walked beside him. He smiled at Mark Denning, but held a warning finger to his lips.
They walked in silence, while the corridors became rockier and more dimly lighted. At last, far away from the city, Carston stopped under an immense jutting rock and quietly gripped Mark's hand. There was a world of feeling in his voice as he said barely whispering:
"I'd lost hope of ever seeing any of you again!"
"How did you get here?" Mark asked the question that had been burning in his mind. "Did they pick you up at the swamp, too?"
"Yes. We're both on the same trail—and here the trail ends."
"But I had no idea you'd preceded me," Mark told him. "It must have been considered a far more important assignment than I was told, to send you to the Swamp!"
"We didn't know, we weren't certain," Carston said thoughtfully. "But we received a bit of information which, if true, was of the greatest importance. It seemed impossible, fantastic, but the hazard was so great, that even what amounted to a vague rumor warranted my going. You were to follow in a few months, without knowing I had gone ahead. Well, you already know most of the rest; but Earth's government doesn't even suspect the deadly peril it will soon have to face!"