The Venusian's words carried by vibration of his helmet through the hazy air to the two glowing men. For the taller, the one whose face seemed vaguely familiar, answered.
"You are right,” he said slowly, in a deep, strangely husked voice. “We are men like yourselves, who came to this hellish world in the past. And it made us into what you see."
"How is it possible for you to live, when your body has been changed into radioactive matter?” Thorn asked wildly. “It has never been dreamed that there could be radioactive life!"
"Life,” said the tall glowing man heavily, “is dependent upon energy. Your bodies draw energy from their chemical processes. But my body needs now, no. chemical consumption of air and food to give it energy, for every atom of it now flames with the energy which itself radiates. Nothing can halt that spontaneous flow of energy from the atoms of my body. It will go on for ages until every atom has completely lost its energy and has been transmuted into elements lower in the atomic scale. I cannot die, until then."
A sound of bitter laughter tore from his lips as his glowing eyes held the three horror-stricken Planeteers.
"I cannot die, do you hear? Though I were to cut my own limbs off, though I were to hack my body, it would still live, for each atom of each fragment would still emit ceaseless energy. My brain — my consciousness — would still remain living! And even if my brain were cut to bits, each bit of it would retain the flame of my life and consciousness."
"God!” muttered Gunner Welk thickly. “Then this is what has befallen all the explorers of the past who came here to Erebus!"
The tall radioactive man nodded his glowing head somberly.
"Aye, it has befallen hundreds of others who came here, as it did me. I did not dream of the nature of this devil world when I came here. How could I? I thought the shining hazes a mere phosphorescence. I landed my ship, and at once my ship crumbled as certain of its metallic elements were swiftly disintegrated by the radiation. And then the radiation quickly changed my body — into this.
"And I have dwelt here ever since, as you see me now. A travesty of life, a mockery of a human being living on and on, unable to die, unable even to kill myself!"