In any case, he had gone too far to back down now. Landing on Triton without a license, as he had done, was itself a violation of Interplanetary Law. Attempted violation of a Tritonian temple was a serious offense. If the Patrol caught him, he would spend the rest of his life in the mines of Mercury. And they would be sure to catch him if he failed to get the Eye.
It wasn't like the good old days, when an outlaw could always keep a million miles ahead of the Patrol. Now every port where he might obtain supplies was too closely watched. Only Cyrene offered a place of refuge, and there only to a man with plenty of money. Larsen smiled grimly. Whatever happened, he was not going back to the mines. There was always one very sure way of cheating the law!
He pushed the torch ahead of him through the hole, cautiously. Its exhaust condensed to ice on the cold bort. A few projections of the bort barred his way. Larsen turned up the torch, directed it on them. The bort glowed yellow in the fierce heat, as the pure carbon burned, which condensed to dry ice on his space-suit.
When those obstructions were gone, Larsen crawled past into the Temple, and stood up. A thin powder of snow covered everything. The bluish glare of the torch, reflected from it, suggested but faintly the vastness of the place. Before him crouched a monstrous figure, human sized, but lobster shaped, its head enormous, its dozen legs many jointed. Many similar figures lay on the floor, as stiffly motionless, each grasping a massive double-headed ax.
Larsen had to turn up his torch before he could be sure that the crouching figure was indeed the idol he sought, and those others its guardian priests, frozen in the death-like sleep of their kind. Not till dawn could anything awaken them. Dawn, he knew, could not be far off. But he reckoned that it would take some time for its reviving warmth to penetrate the immense thickness of those walls.
Cautiously, he wiped the snow off the single enormous eye that occupied the center of the idol's forehead. The eye flashed fire at him; blue-white, transparent, lustrous as a diamond. It had been cut, diamond fashion, in many facets, to resemble the many-lensed, insect-like eyes of the Tritonians themselves. The eye was set in a band of cement. Larsen tested that cement with a chisel. He cursed. It was almost as hard as the bort from which the idol had been hewn. He dared take no chances on scratching the Eye. He turned on his torch full blast, and began to cut into the bort around the cement, careful to keep the flame away from the Eye. Sudden heating might crack that mysterious stone.
Larsen worked feverishly, forgetful of time, sweating despite the chill, until he felt a draught on his back; a cold that bit through his space-suit to his very marrow. Snowflakes were swirling around him. The dawn-wind, blowing through the hole in the door! On Triton, the hydrogen atmosphere froze every night.
From either side, winds rushed in to fill the vacuum, but themselves froze before they had gone far.