"Why ... you're the scientist of the golden mask when I was at the ..." but a cool hand was suddenly pressed against his lips. A vague fragrance as of Venusian jasmines was in Guerlan's nostrils and before he could say any more, a livid crack appeared down the length of the vat, growing swiftly until the vat where Guerlan had been working on the defective coupling, split into two halves with a prodigious hiss, like an apple cloven in two. A cataract of spuming acid flooded into the safety moat, while hundreds of analysts and technicians came scrambling up the opaque hetero-plastic ladders that surpassed columbium steel in tensile strength and cycle-endurance for unlike metal, there was no fatigue factor. A babel of voices rose above the broken hum of the machinery and the swirling hiss of the released acid. Intolerable fumes taxing the conditioners in the safety towers, burned the membranes of their nostrils and mouths as they gasped for air. And, above the hum of the machinery, the growing turmoil of panic-stricken technicians and tumult of excited voices, rose the crystalline tones of the slender scientist once more: "_Vat 66 explodes in twelve minutes!_" A desperate look--the look of a trapped animal glazed Guerlan's green eyes. If this was true, it was the end for him. "The organic acid vat!... But, it's impossible!" He gasped. Yet, inwardly, even as he denied the possibility, he knew with soul-wrenching dread, and the certitude of a _perceptive_ that it was true. But he didn't have time to think, to plan a solution of the problem, for already the outpouring technicians were sweeping him onward in a desperate exodus toward the multiple conveyors that reached every section and floor of the titanic structure that was known as Plastic No. 15. Once as he was being pushed forward by the press of horrified analysts, synthetizers, selectors, graders and all the technical complement of the Second Order who actually transformed all foods, materials, minerals and in fact everything produced in Neptune, he glimpsed the calm features of the scientist he had first seen at the Feast of the Jewels in the City of the Sphere, and it seemed to him there was a hint of pity in the violet eyes. Guerlan's face was white as _Jadite_ as he roared orders in an effort to stem the maddened flood of men. He exhorted them to don their masks of crysto-plast and try to hold back the expected explosion, but no one paid any attention; it was doubtful if they even understood him in their growing horror of the dread, corrosive acid that converted organic matter into a secret formula that none but the Scientists of the Inner Circle were permitted to know anything about. They never saw the final product under the penalty of death. * * * * *