He nudged Waltk, the huge Jovian who lay beside him. "Don't get restless, now," he mumbled through the mask. "We have hours to wait. And somebody might spot this patch of ground if you keep wriggling."
The Jovian grunted, wriggled again, and then was quiet.
"Men have escaped from The Hole before," Jarl Gare muttered, "but they were always caught before they got to the pearl-beds. Waltk's body and my brain will get us through."
He envisioned one of the huge Venusian pearls—so rare and so precious on Earth that it could buy a man's freedom, even from a murder charge.
Jarl Gare fell asleep, dreaming of a bauble as big as his head.
He was awakened by a nudge. "It is night," Waltk grunted. "I smell it."
Gare worked one hand up through the spongy earth, poked a hole in it and wiped the mud from his mask's eye-piece.
"Right," he muttered. "It's time to go." He worked his head out of the ground and looked about.
There could be infra-red spotlights covering the very ground under which they lay. But they would have to take the chance.