She rose to her feet and clambered down the rock.
"Getting back Jimmy's mine laborers," she said, a twinkle in her eyes. "I see you've got Antlers Park. I'm glad of that. It saves me a lot of trouble." She took off her spectacles and wiped them on her sleeve. "Don't look so fuddled, Billy-boy. Come along, and I'll show you."
She led the way through the narrow passage into the valley. A deep gorge, it was, with the black sheer cliffs on either side pressing close. Ten feet forward, I stopped short, staring in amazement.
Advancing toward me like a column of infantry came a long line of Larynx miners. They walked slowly, looking straight ahead, moving down the center of the gorge toward the entrance.
But there was more! A kite car was drawn up to the side. The windscreen had been removed, and mounted on the hood was a large bullet-like contrivance that looked not unlike a search lamp. A blinding shaft of bluish radiance spewed from its open end. Playing it back and forth upon the marching men were Jimmy Baker and Xartal, the Martian.
"Ultra violet," Grannie Annie explained. "The opposite end of the vibratory scale and the only thing that will combat the infra-red rays that cause red spot fever. Those men won't stop walking until they've reached Shaft Four."
Grannie Annie told her story during the long ride back to Shaft Four. We drove slowly, keeping the line of marching Larynx miners always ahead of us.
Jimmy Baker had struck a new big lode of Acoustix, a lode which if worked successfully would see Larynx Incorporated become a far more powerful exporting concern than Interstellar Voice. Antlers Park didn't want that.
It was he or his agents who placed those lens buttons in the Larynx barracks. For he knew that just as Jupiter's great spot was responsible for a climate and atmosphere suitable for an Earthman on this Eighth Moon, so also was that spot a deadly power in itself, capable when its rays were concentrated of causing a fatal sickness.
Then suddenly becoming fearful of Grannie's prying, Antlers Park strove to head her off before she reached Shaft Four.