Now there were but the interminable weeks of waiting that were to come before a rescue expedition was sent to save him.
And on the ship speeding back to the spacelanes, Bart Caxton clawed at his shirt collar. He gasped, trying to get oxygen from the dying air. He read the gauges with incredulous eyes, then came to his feet and lurched down the corridor. He swung through the door of the tank room, swayed there, his eyes straining into the semi-darkness.
And a terrible scream ripped at his constricted throat. For he knew then the thing that Headley would shortly discover. The pools of semi-frozen liquid on Uranus were of liquid oxygen—and the animals in those pools lived on pure oxygen.
Even as he watched, one animal turned from the last tank of oxygen, ran frantically about on short legs, then collapsed, its split mouth gaping in death.
Caxton screamed, felt nausea cramping at his body. He remembered then the liquid into which he had rolled Headley's body, and he knew the other man would live to see Earth again. And he knew then that the animals in the ship had used in minutes the life-giving gas that should have lasted for days.
And even as he screamed, he fell. And the last sight he had was of the rock-animals' split mouths laughing at him and his plans in an awful mocking silence.