Metal doors had been clanging open. Venard was suddenly aware of the shuffling of feet and the lifeless stirring and phlegmatic voices of those whose minds had surrendered. Venard leaned against the wall of the cubicle. He wouldn't stand at attention now. Not again. He had once to avoid being beaten. But they couldn't do anything more to a man than kill him. And he would take care of that now, his own way. A much quicker and less complicated way than was to be found in the experimental wards.
The women were the first of the pathetic line of chained humans who staggered into sight around a turn in the dark corridor. Their cells were on the west half of Concentration Camp No. 7 and they were always first in the hostage lines. Bony human wrecks in drab and ragged sack-like garments. Grey faces behind dry strings of unhealthy, scaly hair.
"The Marties, they ain't got any intelligence at all," whispered Larson, "to make beautiful females look that way. They're fiends. I remember when maybe them very ladies used to dance to a Ganymedian orchestra in the Lunaville escapeasy. That first one, now, she might be Glora Karstedt. Glora was the most beautiful woman in the System. Hey, Glora! Remember me, Kewpie Doll Larson?"
The pathetic skin-and-bone shape didn't even smile. Dull eyes stared straight ahead, pallid, blood-streaked face that was a blank mask of frozen horror. Venard gripped the bars. His knuckles shone whitely, his whole body a tense, helpless arc of mental torture. "If they could only die as Earthmen," he said softly. "And not as slaves."
Two Marties paused, one pressed a button.
"It's us all right," said Venard tensely. The cell door ground open. Boneless lengths of purple-veined arms, muscled like serpents, reached in and dragged the little man out first. Others reached for Venard. Animate sacks of liquid intelligence. Four sliding and contracting feet like snails. Filamented arms of great strength guided by highly emotional intelligence. Judged by human standards, these were horrors. Yet intelligence can hide behind any kind of facade. A mind adjusted to Solar concepts is influenced by intelligence and behavior alone, not by exterior physical aspects. These Martians had been good Solar citizens once, responsible and progressive. But they had been seduced by delusions of grandeur. The old Martian Royalists who had been overthrown a hundred years ago had returned. And returning, they had conquered democratic progressive thought, returned Mars to the old gods of carnage and dark evil, had plunged the Solar System into an orgy of primitive blood-lust, barbarism and hate.
Venard swore, threw off a heavy, plopping arm. Somehow, the heavy bulging body sacks had always resembled punching bags. He had longed to test this visual impression with tactile experimentation. A squeeshing smack belched out from beneath his fist. The shocked Martie stumbled back against the line of apathetic prisoners. Articulation on the tips of its appendages writhed after the butt of its sheathed H-gun.
