"Clymer Nison!” said Gunner hoarsely, unbelievingly. “The man who helped Robert Roth build the first space-ship of all, the man who was first of all men to visit Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and who—"
"— and who wanted to be the first man to visit Erebus, also,” Nison finished heavily, “And who has remained here ever since, in living death, the most horrible of dooms."
The Planeteers could not speak. They could only stare at the glowing man in stricken awe.
To them, as to all who sailed space, this man ranked almost as a demigod. He and the immortal Robert Roth had statues in their honor on every inhabited planet. And now they had found him on this far mystery world, not really living, yet not dead!
"So long — so long ago it was that I came here,” Clymer Nison was saying in his heavy voice, his shining eyes staring tragically into the haunted past. “So long, since I left Earth on that fatal outward voyage that brought me to this doom.
"And yet there are times when all the long centuries of long death here seem but a moment, when it seems that it was only yesterday that I sailed with such high hopes. When it seems only yesterday that I toiled with Robert to build that first ship of his, and watched him roar out into space to glory."
"You say there are others like you two on this world?” John Thorn asked unsteadily.
Nison nodded heavily. “Aye, there are several hundred of us radioactive men wearily roaming this hellish world. All of them men who have come here in past centuries’ and have been trapped, as I was trapped, by the deadly radiation. You are the first men I have ever seen come here and escape the doom that seized us."
"We landed on that black meteorite mountain of asterium,” Thorn told him. “And we ray-proofed our suits with the metal."
"Ask him about the radite, John,” muttered Sual Av tensely. Jerkily, Thorn told the two glowing men what had brought them to Erebus. There was a brooding silence before Clymer Nison spoke.