There was a moment of un-thinking panic, of hearing the distant roar of tumbling black water and the savage grunts of the man dangling below him. Someone grabbed his feet and his headlong plunge was arrested. Arzt was shouting: "Hold him! Don't let him get away with that paper!"
Lolan fought the burning numbness of his forearm. Ars Lugo had ripped off a belt-buckle and was slashing at his knuckles with it. The men above kept shouting encouragement while they fought for leverage. Every sinew in the Martian's body stood out in ridges and knots. Sweat bathed his flesh, and he knew that moisture was causing Lugo to slip still further. "Hurry!" he groaned. "I can't—"
With startling abruptness he was flying out of the hole, while Ars Lugo, with strips of skin under his fingernails that he had ripped from Lolan's hand, went spinning down into black nothingness. Pain had beaten determination. Ars Lugo had won—death!
Horror held the officers around the hole like statues, staring down. It was during that interval that Lolan felt a hard, slippery object in his hand. He opened it to see the bracelet Ars Lugo had worn, which he had somehow torn loose. A curious, heavy ornament of iridite crystals and onyx, and on the inside of it strange scratchings, like—
Like a map! Some impulse caused Lolan's fingers to clamp on the bracelet. Arzt was staring.
"And there goes our chance for a quick disposal of these other two," he grunted sourly. "If you could have ... well, it's done now." Briskly he gave an order. "Take them home. But remember this, Venusians—your consorting with revolutionaries has marked you for death! At any day, any hour, I may have you seized and brought back."
Atarkus paused scornfully on the threshold. Mora had already gone, her head high and eyes straight ahead. "We don't frighten easily," the old ruler flung back. "When you live in hell as we do, one more pit of damnation merely serves to bore us. May you boil in your own lard, Martian pig!"
Arzt swore at him and half-drew his pistol. Sneering, then, he relaxed and turned to fix Lolan with a burning glance. "Your failure tonight intrigues me," he offered suggestively. "You never seemed to be hindered by pain to that extent before."
Lolan showed him his bleeding fingers, from which great drops of blood were falling. "It was the shock," he murmured. "You don't think I let him escape on purpose—!"
"I hardly imagine you could be so foolish. At any rate, you'll be given a chance to redeem yourself. Sometime in the next three or four days I want those two killed, very quietly and—very thoroughly. The honor is to be yours."