ish warmth that made the perspiration which covered his body feel clammily cold. The old fear of murder was gone. Nellon knew only a burning desire to get the thing done, a wild alarm that his opportunity would vanish before he got the chance.
Big Tim shrugged.
"Come on, then. But watch it, guy, and sing out if you need me." With a last troubled glance at Nellon, he turned to the downward sloping trail and began the descent. He moved slowly and carefully, testing each foot of the way with a ponderous, insulated boot for the sudden slickness that would announce the dangerous ice.
Nellon was swept with relief. His blood rushed through his veins in a sudden fierce singing. Now, now! The broad, metal back of Big Tim's suit spread before him. Far down below the gleaming ice waited.
Nellon took swift steps forward, his arms coming up. The rushing in his ears leaped to a high pitch. He sucked in a breath, held it. Then—
Nellon slipped. It must have been a small patch of ice undetected by Austin. But Nellon slipped, lost balance, crashed into the other. Together they went whizzing down the trail toward the frozen lake. It was a long slide, but incredibly swift, and confusion and surprise made it seem all the shorter. What happened took place too quickly for thought to follow or prevent.
They caromed onto the ice of the lake. With a gleeful, demoniac howl, the terrible wind swooped down upon them, swept them with increased speed toward the edge of the falls. Though still half stunned by the sudden catastrophe, they reacted with the instinct of long conditioning, tried frantically to retard their swift flight over the ice. But it was futile. Their gouging metal fingers could find no purchase in the glassy smoothness over which they sped. And before friction could slow them even the merest of trifles, they were swept over the edge of the falls.
They went over, but not down upon the jagged ice teeth bared hungrily below. Nellon's attempted shove had given them both an added impetus, and they had shot over the ice at an angle which landed them upon the snow banked on the farther side of the gorge.
In that far distant day when the heat of Saturn had been great enough to cloak its satellites in warmth, the gnawing of the falls had worn steep sides in the gorge. And though the snow upon which the two men had fallen was thick and soft, it was not enough to hold them, and they went rolling end over end, in great clouds of powdery white, to stop only when they had reached the bottom.
For long moments they lay still. A thick pall of settling snow hung on the frigid air. The wind seized portions of this and sent them whirling and twisting in fantastic gyrations.
The thermalloy suits were essentially compact, mobile shelters, and had been designed more for protection against inimical extra-terrestrial elements rather than for comfort. Brad Nellon had been bruised and shaken until it seemed that his body was one throbbing ache. His senses whirled giddily in a black mist shot through with flames of pulsing red.
Of a sudden the pain leaped to intolerable heights. His battered muscles screamed an anguished protest along his nerves. Then the pain was gone, and momentarily the blackness closed in again. But something like a fresh wind sprang up, and sent the engulfing fog thinning away. Nellon’s brain cleared. He opened his eyes.
He looked into Big Tim's face. Big
