"We're close to the last planetary outpost," he observed, "and, nothing yet! This isn't an expedition, Nardon ... it's a farce! What can you expect to find in Saturn? A frozen waste of solid, glassy hydrogen and helium, an infinite wilderness of 'hot-solid' gases under unimaginable pressure. You know Saturn has an atmosphere of at least twenty thousand miles in depth!"
"I know nothing of the kind," Bill answered evenly, with studied calm. "Saturn has never been properly 'correlated.' Liquids and solids don't compress; besides, even if Saturn were as you say a frozen waste with a temperature of say 180° C. below zero, that would still be too hot for hydrogen, which cannot exist as a liquid at that temperature. I needn't mention helium which requires a temperature lower still for liquefaction."
"You're leading us," the Neptunian hissed through clenched teeth, "into gales of methane and ammonia roaring around a dead world of frightful cold; into a frozen hell where if the atmosphere doesn't crush us, we'll never escape the overwhelming gravitational pull.... You ... you fiend." The last words were a shriek just as he launched himself in a tigerish leap straight for the throat of the Terran "Correlator."
And Bill sprang aside, his left hook instinctively catapulting to the unprotected chin of the Neptunian. But it failed to stop him. Off balance, slightly stunned by the blow, the maddened delegate from Neptune whirled on the Terran, aiming a staggering blow that whizzed past Bill's head with savage force. Off balance, the Neptunian staggered forward, his lean features contorted by bestial rage and the lust to kill. He was like a man possessed.
Bill Nardon was icy calm now. The harrowing training all members of the Explorer Class had to undergo, had come to the surface, and to the tall Terran everything had ceased to exist but the task at hand. He rolled aside slightly, sending a straight left to the Neptunian's head, driving him off balance again. Bill weaved to and fro, lightly balanced on his toes as the Neptunian came boring back with terrible tenacity. Bill's right arm was a peg on which he hung the blows of the man from Neptune, while lashing like a cobra, his boxer's left, long and weaving, stabbed in again and again. The "Correlator" didn't want to kill the man. For here was another mystery. The attack was absurd, from the standpoint of their aims and goals. But he had no time to correlate the facts and arrive at a decision.
The Neptunian rushed murderously eager, and Bill let his heels touch the floor, refused to give way. He took a staggering blow to the midriff, and went pale from pain, but with the swiftness of a striking Calamar, he countered with a vicious left to the face and a slashing right cross. The Neptunian staggered uttering a hoarse cry as his features seemed to run like the quicksilver face of the Amazon from Mercury. He staggered and fell to the blood-spattered ordine plastic floor of the cruiser. Bill stood heaving, only now the answer was apparent to him, but again his thoughts were cut short, for the Neptunian was far from through. Into the ghastly face, a new expression of diabolical fury had appeared, and as he lurched to his feet, his right hand clawed at his belt for a weapon. Only power-rapiers had been allowed them individually until a landing was effected, and it was fortunate, for as the clawing fingers closed about the rapier's hilt, an unholy light came into the Neptunian's eyes.
Bill heard a thunderous battle-cry as a bulky shape sprang between him and the Neptunian, but he swept his rescuer aside. It was the Amazon, her own power-rapier drawn for battle.
"No interference!" he exclaimed in a voice as cold as outer space. His own blade was in his hand now, the flexible Columbium-steel activated by the dreadful electronic fire. The touch of that blade disintegrated flesh and bone and metal even. They were face to face now, confronting each other with the wary savagery of Venusian Ocelandians. The smell of death was in the air, and too, the wordless, tremendous, inarticulate vibration from an unknown source that seemed to hint at inconceivable horror, and ebbed and flowed about them. They could all sense it now, as it increased as if in a crescendo of triumph.
And at that instant the Neptunian struck. One moment they were circling for an opening, their ghastly weapons ready, and the next the singing blades met in midair as Bill Nardon parried the slashing blow. And then reason tottered as time stood still. Where the blades had been a flaring vortex of unendurable blue light sprang between them like a hellish fan of electronic fury opening before their eyes.