They split up, running along the walk that connected with the control boxes, hurdling the bodies of Jovians suffocated in oil. Presently the glassite door loomed before them.
Birek and the dying Earthman led MacVickers' party. The Venusian wrenched open the door. And MacVickers felt his heart stop.
There were three Europans instead of one. The guards had come down from above.
"Get them out here," he said. "Out into the oil."
A wave of shuddering agony tossed through him. The Jovies were using their powerful hand-tubes. Only the glassite walls partially protected them.
The fog began to whip past him. He groaned, thinking that it was going. And then he put his head in his hands and wept with incredulous, thankful joy.
The oily mist was being sucked into the box by powerful ventilators. MacVickers remembered Loris saying, "They get the pure air. Our ventilator tubes are only a few inches wide."
He laughed. The bell swooped sickeningly. Somewhere off in the fog he heard screams and shouts and Pendleton's voice roaring triumph.
He thought, "We never could have done it if the tide hadn't come and made the Jovies seasick."
He laughed again. It tickled him that seasickness should lose a war.