"Tell Penger that and see what he answers you. You're on the beach, my friend. You've been there before, but this is the final beach—the swampside of Venus. And here you'll stay until Penger is ready to let you go. I've been here five years."
Joel Latham put his head in his hands and tried to think. Kueelo's voice droned on:
"You'll work for Penger. You'll work in the swamps. An Earthman, a Martian, a Ganymedian can do ten times the work of one of these gweels." He gestured at the pallid-faced low-Venusians who moved listlessly through the mud, pulling up the draanga-weed. "You'll work for the amount of tsith Penger portions out to you, and glad to get it."
At the word tsith, Latham's head came up. The dawning fear was gone from his eyes.
"All right! I'll do it, but only for a while, mind you! I'll find a way out of this. I'm getting back to the iridium fields on Callisto."
He plunged wildly into the mud and sank to his waist. But it was the thought of tsith that drove him on, not Callisto. Kueelo stood by and watched, a thin, knowing smile creasing his leathery lips.
A sort of frenzy had come upon Joel Latham. He tore at the stubborn draanga-weed and brought it up dripping, tossing the long lengths across his shoulder. He knew of this stuff.
When properly synthesized draanga-weed had a medicinal value on the various planets. Penger shipped it out four times a year, at a neat little profit.
Latham moved on. A yellowish fog had come down, the dreaded igniis fatui. Unless one kept moving, decomposition of the blood set in, essential salts within the body were dissolved and cellular activity ceased. Latham grinned wryly. He doubted if it could touch him! There was too much tsith within his alchemy. Nevertheless he moved and worked ceaselessly. He could see that caricature of a Martian standing back there watching.
Then it happened; the thing happened which was to prove both a promise and a despair. Joel Latham felt a hardness at his heel, an irritating lump inside his neoprene boot.