"How'd you discover it without being affected by it?" Norman asked.
"Your friend Gordon was the guinea pig," the Mercurian said. Norman kept still. "After we took him and his cruiser when he entered the Protection Zone, we came here immediately. Working in space suits until my technicians on Mercury discovered an immunization, we brought Vulcan's strange liquid in like an oil gusher. The effect of the pure liquid is instantaneous; its effects on the surface of the ground outside are greatly diluted. While we built this house round the well, we watched Vulcan's milder effects on your friend in the glass cage."
Norman's jaw paled, but he kept his head. "How did Johnny get off the planet after he escaped?"
"Fool!" Sade laughed. "He didn't escape. We could stay and watch him every minute—that's why we left the automatic camera to record his reactions. He did contrive to get out of the cage but when we found him in the jungle we simply took him off the planet and dropped him in space in a life boat where he'd be picked up." Sade laughed again. "Did you think I didn't know he built two ships with counteractives! John Gordon's return was merely a message to you—to come here in that other ship. Now we have the only counteractives in existence. Vulcan is an utterly impregnable fortress. No army in the universe can interrupt my plans."
Norman realized that everything Sade said was true. No power could approach Vulcan without a counteractive. "What are your plans, Sade?"
The fat man held up his new right arm, his small eyes glowing. "My technicians obtained for me the hand-bud of an unborn child. It was embedded in the stump of my right arm." He stared at his hand stretched its white fingers, his thick lips smiling. "With but a brief exposure of my arm to a spray of Vulcan's liquid in full strength, I grew the hand of a thirty-year-old man!" He banged the cylinder with his fist. "What would happen if I sprayed this life-death fluid in a city street! It can be placed in a shell and fired from a gun. I have here a Force that can cause the most horrible of wounds—quick decay. It can utterly destroy or immediately heal. How I use this power depends upon how quickly the governments of the universe submit to my wishes in a new stellar order."
But Norman had a question stronger than his hopelessness at what he'd just heard. "Could this liquid help John Gordon now?"
Instead of replying, Sade smiled. He stepped over to one of the room's blank walls and pressed a small button. A wide panel slid back revealing several tiers of wire cages containing monkeys, rabbits, and white rats. Sade scooped a plump slick rat out of its cage and and closed the panel again. Walking back to the cylinder, he slapped the helpless creature's head against his wrist and stunned it. Then, drawing a flat shelf from the cylinder's platform, he dropped the unconscious rat on it and threw the heavy bolts on the cylinder's cap.
Inside the thick-walled container, Norman discovered, were neatly coiled tubes hanging on pegs. Sade grabbed one of the small hoses, pulled it out and squeezed a button on the little nozzle. A fine, blood-red spray hissed from the nozzle and he directed the red mist upon the limp body of the white rat. The damp liquid had barely touched the rat's fur when instantly its small face wrinkled, its fur grew coarse and thin and it assumed the appearance of a very old animal.