Immediately it began to shrink. It would continue until it became the size of a small marble, when it would either rot, as the majority did, or begin to crystallize into a priceless Venusian pearl. But that happened only with one in ten thousand. It was different with the purple ones, they never failed to crystallize into a violet globe of unearthly beauty and incalculable value. Less than a hundred of the purple had ever been found. They were so rare that any prisoner who harvested three, was granted freedom.
"Pretty!" the cello voice taunted, behind Mark. "In a few hours it will be rotting and stinking to high heaven!"
"Cut it, Aladdo!" Mark growled. He tossed the white Josmian into the basket he pushed before him across the mud; the purple one he placed carefully in his trouser pocket. He pushed on, searching the pungent-smelling mud that came up to his thighs.
Suddenly the warm ooze rose to his waist and crept inexorably higher. For an instant, Mark clawed at the mud. It was surging up to his armpits now, as he floundered in the tenacious sink hole. He shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes and the numbness from his brain. He stopped thrashing about, for he knew that was futile. He threw back his head and gave a shout in which was more than a note of sheer terror.
Mark clawed at the mud surging up to his armpits.
At least a dozen men were moving near him, waist deep in the Venusian mud. At his cry, they stopped and stared at him dully, fatalistically. They could easily have formed a chain and pulled him out, but none moved. They'd seen too many repetitions of this tragedy to care anymore. It happened every day; a new man, a little careless, caught in one of the deadly sink holes ... it happened even to the veterans of this Venusian prison camp, sometimes deliberately, as they became weary of a hopeless existence.
The mud was almost to Mark's chin now; only his forearms and his blond head were visible. Hatred came into his eyes as he glared at the men about him, most of them Earthmen like himself, who would not help him. Again he struggled, tried to hoist himself upward.