"A spacer it is, Jim Landor. One such as you never saw before, and it's being built under conditions such as you cannot imagine. We have to mine and fashion the metal in the few tiny furnaces we have here, and it's inconceivably slow due to the scarcity and crudeness of tools. We've been at work on this one spacer for three years. "As for this new metal, it's to be found here in huge deposits. In some ways it's like radite, it might even _be_ radite, strangely changed through the centuries by those peculiar green radiations. Anyway, it's amazingly light and tough, almost expansive under fuel pressure and it's going to revolutionize spacer construction if we can only get any from here and make it known!" "But how, man? How do you propose--" "To get the spacer out of here?" Spurlin smiled confidently. "In one super blast we're going to hurl through this roof to the city above, and through _that_ cavern roof onto the surface of Mars. I'm fully convinced this metal is capable of withstanding it. We're building a double hull. And we have enough fuel hoarded here to take us clear to Earth if we wish." Jim nodded, but he was not enthusiastic. "How long, do you think, before you finish it?" "Perhaps only another month now! The ore's damnably hard to get out, and we can only stay up there on the surface a few hours at a time--but with the added help of you new men...." * * * * * "We're with you to the finish!" Conley exclaimed, and the others nodded enthusiastically. Wessel, especially, had listened with an eager intentness to Spurlin's description of the new metal. Wessel had come seeking new radite deposits, and had stumbled upon something vast beyond his fondest dreams! Even his loyalty to TRI-PLANETARY MINING was fast beginning to waver. "What I want to know," Jim voiced the thought uppermost in his mind, "is the status of that little old Martian, Bhruulo." Spurlin frowned. "No one seems to have found out, and most of us don't care. He's incredibly old, of course. He seems to have been here always. In some strange manner, he seems to know when men come into the Polar Cap, and he always sends that surface vehicle out for them. However, he completely ignores us here. I'm not even sure that he knows we're working on this spaceship! We try to keep out of his sight, and I've personally not seen him more than twice in the past year." "But isn't it incredible that in three years he hasn't found out or guessed what you are doing?" "Not so incredible. We don't know what he's doing. We leave him alone and he leaves us alone." "But," Jim exclaimed unbelievingly, "he brought you here, and you're not even curious to know why?" "Let me remind you that certain men have been curious--and they have disappeared. Anyway our sole purpose now is in completing the spacer for our escape." Jim gestured disdainfully. "And you, Spurlin--you once claimed to be a scientist! You have not even the scientific mind--"