"Listen the hero," Jon said. "You planning on taking on the whole First Quadrant single-handed or something? They sure don't bring you back to life back there, if that's what you think. They just make you a little deader."
"Deader?"
"Well I'd rather be buried if I get killed than burned into a little pile of ashes and sent home in a jar. And that's what they do. There's not enough land on Venus to bury everybody every year, and they sure aren't going to go to the trouble of hauling a bunch of corpses out into the ocean just to dump 'em. Not when they can burn 'em up, anyway, right here."
"Burn 'em up?" Mike said, feeling funny in his stomach. "Alive?"
"Not often, I guess. Only when there's a mistake and they don't notice it in time. Or if there haven't been enough guys killed to make the year's quota. Then they take unconscious ones. That's what my father told me once, anyway."
"Suppose—suppose you're just hurt bad? Do they—"
"Not if they've made the quota. If you end up hurt they take you to the other land mass—there's a big hospital there. I've never seen it, but my father says it's the biggest single building ever made."
"How long are you kept there?"
"Until you're recovered, of course. The longest case on their records was my cousin's. He got a broken neck when he was hit in the face by a mace, and lost both eyes. They repaired the cut nerves, gave him two new eyes, and fixed his neck in about a month. They can do anything, so you don't have to worry. I got a broken back myself last year—I was out walking in two weeks."