"But if someone could escape and get word back.... This contraption is a potential bomb big enough to blow Io out of space! The experts think it only takes a fraction of a gram of the pure stuff to power a disintegrator shell." There was a pulse beating hard under his jaw and his grey-green eyes were bright. Loris said, "Escape." He said it as though it were the most infinitely beautiful word in existence, and as though it burned his mouth. "Escape," whispered the man with the shimmering, deadly sheathe of aquamarine. "There is no escape but--this." * * * * * MacVickers said, into the silence that followed, "I'm going to try. One thing or the other, I'm going to try." Pendleton's incredibly tired eyes looked at the livid burns on MacVickers' face. "It's been tried. And it's no use." Birek moved suddenly out of his queer, dazed stillness. He looked up and made a hoarse sound in his throat. MacVickers caught a flicker of motion overhead, but he didn't pay attention to it. He went on, speaking quietly in a flat, level voice. "There's a war on. We're all in it. Soldiers, civilians, and kings, the big fellows and the little ones. When I got my master's ticket, they told me a man's duty wasn't done until his ship was cradled or he was dead. "My ship's gone. But I haven't died, yet." Pendleton's broad, gaunt shoulders drooped. He turned his head away. Loris' face was a death-mask carved from grey bone. He said, almost inaudibly: "Shut up, damn you. Shut up." The movement was closer overhead, ominously close. The men scattered across the pit had stopped working, watching MacVickers with glistening, burning eyes across hot oil-filmed metal. MacVickers said harshly, "I know what's wrong with you. You were broken before you came, thinking the smash was coming and it was no use." Pendleton whispered, "You don't know, the things they do to you." Stiff and dry out of the Earthman's aquamarine mask, came the words, "You'll learn. There's no hope, MacVickers, and the men have all they can bear without pain. "If you bring them more suffering, MacVickers, they'll kill you." Heat. Oil and reeking metal, and white stiff faces filmed with sweat. Eyes shining, hot and glittering with fear. Rocking floor and sucking pumps and a clutching nausea in his belly. Birek, standing straight and still, watching him. Watching. Everybody, watching. MacVickers put his hand flat on the engine-housing beside him. "There's more to it than duty," he said softly, and smiled, without humor, the vertical lines deep in his cheeks. His gaunt Celtic head had a grim beauty. His voice rang clear across the roar of the machines. "I'm Christopher Rory MacVickers. I'm the most important thing in the universe. And if I have to give my life, it'll not be without return on the value of it!"