"Here, O Slumberer, is my real refuge, prepared against our hour of pressing need. Follow me to that which will be your home on Daan so long as you have need of one."
Full twenty feet the corridor drove into the heart of the jungle island, then opened into a series of underground chambers which were to be Stephen's hideout. And looking upon this place, hope blossomed within Duane more strongly than it had ever dared since his wakening from an age-old slumber.
For everything was here ... everything. Not only food and drink with which to sustain life, but the little luxuries—soft beds and warm clothing; a musical instrument, the Daan's equivalent of a phonograph; books to read—were stored here as well. And—most important—constructed within the refuge were those two things which Duane needed most. A compact but efficient chemical laboratory, and a powerful ultra-wave communicator over which he could converse with Okuno on far-away Earth.
Swiftly Amarro instructed him in the operation of those Daan inventions with which he was not familiar. The atomic cooking-range and incinerating unit, the ultra-wave transmitter. Then he gripped Steve's hand in farewell.
"I place my hand in thine thus, O Dwain," he said, "for thus I am told men pledged their faith in the old days. I must go now, ere my absence awakens suspicion. But be of good cheer. That which you asked me to do for the prisoners will be taken care of. Hidden safely here, do what you can and must, and from time to time I will visit you. But be at all times cautious. Stay off the surface of the isle, and answer no calls unless they be from voices you recognize. Goodbye."
And he was gone.
So settled Stephen Duane for a period which on Earth would have been reckoned as three weeks. On slower-turning Venus, and especially here in these marshes which knew only the filtered light of cloud-drenched sunshine, it was hard to mark the passage of time. But days and nights meant nothing to Duane. When he hungered, he ate. When his brain and body wearied of the innumerable tasks to which he set himself, he slept.
Nor was his period of incarceration dreary. There was much to occupy his time. Twice Amarro came furtively and left with equal stealth, each time advising Steve as to the progress of those still captive in the prison camp.
Much, Amarro told him, had been accomplished. The administrative buildings of the camp were a beehive thronged with Daan warriors who each dusk returned disgruntled and petulant. Meanwhile, as the search for the fugitive Slumberer preoccupied the Daans, the back-breaking labor of the Earth prisoners had been suspended. Amarro, with no voice to say him nay, had requisitioned a "water distillation unit" for the convict barracks. And now night and day earthmen and women labored with rekindled vigor to turn out in vast quantities containers of that gaseous by-product Chuck Lafferty was distilling from Venusian klaar.