At that precise instant, steely arms wrapped themselves around him, a monstrous face loomed over him, open-jawed. In a frenzy, Larsen thrust out his right hand. Those jaws closed on his wrist. A blazing agony shot up his arm. His own scream, echoing from his helmet, deafened him. The pain was gone as abruptly as it had come. The face of the Tritonian seemed to melt, to explode. Those arms went limp, the thing collapsed like a punctured balloon.
There was no feeling at all in Larsens' hand now. Not daring to look at it, he stumbled through the air-lock, into the cabin. Even now, he was careful to put the Eye of Triton in the velvet-lined jewel-case he had prepared for it, before strapping himself into his pilot's seat. Awkwardly, with his left hand, he opened the throttle of the rocket-tube, gave the Wolf Cub three gravities acceleration. That was agony to his weary body. But the warmth of the cabin offset the pain.
Gingerly, Larsen looked at his right hand. The glove had been torn clean off it. It was dead white, swollen. The swelling, extending to the wrist, had prevented much air escaping from his suit, before he could get inside the cabin. The skin was covered with fine, bloodless cracks, but the jaws of the Tritonian had never touched it. The inconceivable cold had instantly frozen every drop of blood and lymph in it, bursting every blood-vessel, every capillary, every cell. His hand was dead. Presently, as it thawed, it would rot, turn black, and drop off. Before that, he must get a tourniquet on it. On the other hand, the warm air from his space-suit, escaping into the jaws of the Tritonian, had been as fatal to it as the breath of a blast furnace would have been to a human.
He had been lucky, after all. The surgeons of Cyrene could graft on a new hand—for a price. And he would have that price! In fifteen minutes, awkward with his left hand, Larsen had the Wolf Cub on her course to Luna, and could shut off his rocket-jet. His right arm was beginning to throb, as the nerves thawed. It would give him hell, in the months of voyaging before him, and he knew his slender stock of drugs would never last. But, as he fixed the tourniquet, the thought of his million was more soothing than any narcotic could have been.
Larsen unstrapped himself, and shoved over to the jewel case. He blinked down at it incredulously. The charred ring of cement was there. But it no longer enclosed the Eye of Triton. Instead, the case was half filled with a transparent liquid. Larsen dipped a trembling finger into it. It was cold.
He carried the finger to his lips. The walls of the tiny cabin echoed to his mad laughter. The Eye of Triton, the one priceless gem on a world of gems, had been a block of ice—the only ice on Triton. The warmth of the cabin had melted it to water, worth exactly as much as any other water.
Suddenly, Larsen realized that he was parched with a feverish thirst. He lifted the jewel case to his lips, and drained it in one single prodigious gulp. He had spent plenty of money on liquor before, he reflected. But this must be the first time in history a man had drunk up a million at one draught.
His arm hurt like fire now, the ache of it mingling with the ache of his weary body, the ache of his sick brain. With his left hand, he began to spin the handle of the Kingston valve. The last sound Wolf Larsen heard was the hiss of the air, as it rushed out of the cabin. That, and the laugh with which his last breath left his lungs.
There was always one sure way to cheat Interplanetary Law.