"Let's hope so," was Verger's pessimistic response. "I'd hate to make a forced landing on Callisto."
"Why?" LeDoux wanted to know. "Isn't Callisto inhabited?"
"Sure, it's inhabited. That's the trouble. The natives of Callisto are unquestionably the most fearful and the most ruthless fiends in the known universe."
"What's so fearful about them?" his companion asked.
"Well, for one thing, they're too blamed curious."
"Curious?" LeDoux questioned. "Is that such a terrible crime?"
"It is when it is carried to extremes, like they do. Maybe you haven't heard, but the Callisto boys have an unpleasant habit of grabbing every human being they can get hold of, merely for the playful purpose of cutting them open to find out what makes them tick. Vivisection, I guess you'd call it."
"Nice people!" was LeDoux's comment.
"Yeah, and the worst of it is that there's nothing we humans can do about it. No weapon known to man can harm them. They shed lethal rays like a duck sheds water. Bullets from old-fashioned machine guns go right through them without apparent damage. I ought to know because—" Leaving his sentence suspended in space, Verger exclaimed, "Leaping Luna! What's that?"
Staring through the thick, super-transparent window in the direction which the captain indicated, LeDoux saw a weird, lavender-hued beam shoot out from the surface of Callisto. For two or three tense seconds it whipped around in a spiral path which centered the beam right on the nose of the Goddard, bathing the craft with its throbbing, blinding glare.