ing else until he came around from his strange torpor and discovered that another day had dawned.
He was shackled to the same line of convicts, his pick was in his hands and a snarling voice was yelling:
"Get to work!"
"Surprised?" it was the clipped voice of the convict on his right. Dirk noticed that he was a small, compactly built man of almost middle age.
He swung his pick twice before answering:
"Yes. What is it?"
"Electrical hypnosis." The answer was swift. "Sponge in guard's hand is studded with quills. Shoots a charge into us, knocks us out. Keeps us from planning, talking, thinking about getting away."[1]
"Just work and then a complete blank-out," Dirk grated bitterly. "I'll be glad when I blank-out for good." But he was thinking about the light-haired girl when he spoke, and he wondered if he meant it.
In the next week Dirk learned much from the prisoner chained to his right. The man's name was Vyers and he explained the incredibly brutal and inhuman system which Skarack operated.
Through an arrangement with corrupt officials at the great prison base of Plubium, which was only sixteen hours from this section of Jupiter, Skarack had managed to have hundreds of convicts shipped to his mining settlement. The prison wrote the men off the records as having died, but actually they went to the living death that Skarack had arranged for them. Without the overhead of labor he was able to make fabulous profits from his mineral mines.
The tip of Dirk's pick bit deeper into the rocky soil as he thought of it. There was a new set to his jaw and a strange glint in his eyes that had not been there before.
"I'll live," he muttered to himself. "If I have to wait a hundred years I'll pay him back."
"No," Vyers shook his head briefly. "You won't. The constant electric hypnosis will kill you in about a year. No one can last longer than that. Then there will be more convicts to replace us."
Dirk slammed the pick into the ground and the stout handle almost splintered under the impact.
A LONG one hundred and eight-day Jovian "month" passed without change. The convicts labored, were knocked out electrically, labored again. Some died. Others came.
Dirk Temple continued to swing his pick savagely. His hands were as tough as alligator skin, and his complexion was blackened by the sun. The bloat of dissipation had melted from him, leaving him clean-limbed and powerful. These were the physical changes. Something had happened inside Dirk that no one could see. It was something that grew from a white hot core of hatred into a mighty force of determination that was as inevitable in its way as a waterfall. It showed itself in the grim smile that hovered on his lips. In his silent acceptance of the lashings that fell to him. But most noticeably it was evident in his eyes. They were like the windows of Hell; awful in their cold, deliberate, flaming hatred.
The only soft thought that entered his mind was that of the girl he had seen so briefly his first night in this
- ↑ The exact nature of the "electrical hypnosis" is, of course, unknown, but it was probably not hypnosis at all, but a form of nervous shock that rendered the nervous system incapable of conveying messages for a period of hours, with a resulting apparent state of unconsciousness. Obviously, however, subconscious nervous functioning was not impaired, or death would have resulted. The victim would have "forgotten" to breathe.—Ed.
