"That's true," interjected Thurner. "We talked about it on the way out."
"Most regrettable!" Again that unpleasant, half-dead membrane flashed across the Neptunian's eyes. He seemed to sleep. Minutes passed before he looked up again. "In that event," he said, "you must suffer for the good of Neptune. Follow me." He waited while Timmy climbed into a heated, anti-gravitational space suit.
Thurner cuffed Johnny Damokles to his feet and motioned for him to put on a space suit. Then completely in command of the situation, the Neptunians led Tim and Johnny out into the blue cold of a monster and horrible world. They paused long enough for Thurner and his companion to remove the space suits they'd worn in the heated cabin of the Solabor, and when Thurner seemed to peel his very skin from his body, Timmy understood the miracle by which the pilot had posed as a Callistonian.
III
The pilot was actually a Neptunian. But a beautifully made synthetic skin served him as an undetectable protection against both heat and gravity ... made him, to all appearances, an Inner-Worldian. Timmy was amazed. These Neptunians were surgeons ... and thermal engineers.
"This way," motioned the Neptunian, and drew in a vast breath of Neptune's methane atmosphere. His chest swelled until its minute scales seemed on the verge of separating. Man-like in height and size, his adaptation to a terrible gravity had made him a creature of steel-hard sinew and muscle. Thurner, or whatever his proper name might be, was almost as solid and several inches taller. No wonder he could consume Callistonian whisky by the quart and still navigate a ship successfully.
They walked across the plain, dropped downward into a slit-like canyon. Ahead of them lay a fortress whose only decoration was the simple symbol of the Tsom clan. Its walls bristled with blast guns, but closer examination showed Timmy that they were all of an obsolete pattern. Methane had clogged their rifling and made them utterly useless.
"These aren't used," said their guide. "Just there to frighten away lower forms of life. Watch!" He flicked a switch, and the wall's outer surface raised to reveal a vast network of grids. "Heat grids," he explained. "Perfect defense against the other clans."
"But we don't need defence," added Thurner. "Neptune is a united planet now."