Then he saw the pressure gauge. He let out a keening wail, cut short by the crunch of MacVickers' fist on his mouth. MacVickers whirled and swung the wrench. The loose coupling gave. Air burst whistling from the pipe, and the rhythm of the pumps began to break. But Janu's cry had done it. Men were pelting toward him, and the guards were closing in overhead. MacVickers flung himself bodily on the short hose of the oil-pump. Birek, Loris, Pendleton, the dying Earthman, the hard faces behind them. The guards were manning the shockers. Up in the control boxes black tentacles were flashing across banks of switches. He had to work fast, before they cut the pressure. Birek was ahead of the others, very close. MacVickers gave him the oil-stream full in the face. It blinded him. Then the nearest shocker came on, focussed expertly on MacVickers. He shut his teeth hard, whimpering through them, and turned the hard forced stream of oil into the hoarsely shrieking blast from the open pipe. Oil sprayed up in a heavy, blinding fog. Burning, shuddering agony shook MacVickers, but he held his hose, his feet braced wide, praying to stand up long enough. The catwalks were hidden in the oily mist. The ventilating blowers caught it, thrusting it across the whole space. MacVickers yelled through it, his voice hardly recognizable as human. "You, out there! All of you. This is your chance. Are you going to take it?" Something fell, close by, with a heavy thrashing thud. Something black and tentacled and writhing, covered with a dull film. MacVickers laughed, and the laughter was less human than the voice. "Cowards!" he cried. "All right. I'll do it all myself." Somebody yelled, "They're dying. Look!" There was another heavy thud. The hot strangling fog roiled with hidden motion. MacVickers gasped and retched and shuddered helplessly. He was going to drop the hose in a minute. He was going to fall down and scream. If they stepped the power up one more notch, he was going to fall down and die. Only they were dying too, and forgetting about power. It seemed a static eternity to MacVickers, but it had all happened in the space of a dozen heartbeats. There were yells and shouts and a sort of animal tumult in the thick haze. Suddenly Pendleton's voice rang out of it. "MacVickers! I'm with you, man! You others, listen. He's giving us the break we needed. Don't let him down!" And Janu screamed, "No! He's killed the guards, but there are more. They'll fry us from the control boxes if we help him." The pressure was dropping in the pipe as the power cut out. There was a last hiss, a spurt of oily spray, then silence. MacVickers dropped the hose. Janu's voice went on, sharp and harsh with fear. "They'll fry us, I tell you. We'll lie here and jerk and scream until we're crazy. I'm going to die. I know it. But I won't go through that, for nothing! I'm going back by the ladder and pray they won't notice me."