Thorn's voice broke off as he stared in shaken horror and recognition into the glowing face of the tall radioactive man.
'God above!” Thorn choked. “Your face! I thought it was familiar from pictures. You — Clymer—'
'I am Clymer Nison, yes,” answered the tall glowing man dully.
A spell held the Planeteers, a trance of stupefaction and awe, as they stared at the man before them. A man whose name had been famous in the system's history for nine hundred years, whose name stood second only to that of Robert Roth in the great roll of the space-pioneers.
'Clymer Nison!” said Gunner hoarsely, unbelievingly. “The man who helped Robert Roth build the first space- ship of all, the man who was first of all men to visit Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and who—'
'— and who wanted to be the first man to visit Erebus, also,” Nison finished heavily, “And who has remained here ever since, in living death, the most horrible of dooms.'
The Planeteers could not speak. They could only stare at the glowing man in stricken awe.
To them, as to all who sailed space, this man ranked almost as a demigod. He and the immortal Robert Roth had statues in their honor on every inhabited planet. And now they had found him on this far mystery world, not really living, yet not dead!
'So long — so long ago it was that I came here,” Clymer Nison was saying in his heavy voice, his shining eyes staring tragically into the haunted past. “So long, since I left Earth on that fatal outward voyage that brought me to this doom.
'And yet there are times when all the long centuries of long death here seem but a moment, when it seems that it was only yesterday that I sailed with such high hopes. When it seems only yesterday that I toiled with Robert to build that first ship of his, and watched him roar out into space to glory.'
'You say there are others like you two on this world?” John Thorn asked unsteadily.
Nison nodded heavily. “Aye, there are several hundred of us radioactive men wearily roaming this hellish world. All of them men who have come here in past centuries’ and have been trapped, as I was trapped, by the deadly radiation. You are the first men I have ever seen come here and escape the doom that seized us.'
'We landed on that black meteorite mountain of asterium,” Thorn told him. “And we ray-proofed our suits with the metal.'
'Ask him about the radite, John,” muttered Sual Av tensely. Jerkily, Thorn told the two glowing men what had brought them to Erebus. There was a brooding silence before Clymer Nison spoke.
'And you say that this radite will save the inner planets from dreadful conquest, if you can take it back?” he asked.
'We
'I do not see,” said the glowing man slowly, “what weapon or invention could ever defeat such a fleet as you say the outer planets have gathered.'
The old doubt and fear that Thorn had felt increasingly as the days went by, tautened his voice as he answered.
'We don't know either how Blaine can hope to do that, what the nature of his mysterious weapon is,” Thorn admitted. “Yet, that secret of his is the one last possible chance to prevent the conquest of the Alliance.'
He voiced a desperate appeal to Nison. “Earth is your native world, as Mars is that of your companion. It's to prevent the wreck and ruin of those two worlds, and of Venus and Mercury too, that we're asking you to help us find the radite.'
'I will help you,” Clymer Nison said slowly, his tragic radiant face heavy with thought. “Though the Earth you serve cannot be the Earth of nine centuries ago from which I came, yet it is still Earth.'
His glowing companion, the little Martian, Chan Gray, slowly nodded his head, and spoke to the Planeteers for the first time.
'Aye,” he said huskily. “And I remember the Mars of five centuries ago — the pleasant desert cities, the sun shining on the polar snows. I would not want the hordes of the outer planets to devastate that.'
'You know where the radite lies?” Thorn asked Nison eagerly.
The glowing space-pioneer inclined his bead.
He turned and pointed westward through the swirling blue haze.
'In the mountains yonder, a lump of it lies. But it will be dangerous to try to take it,” he explained. “The terrific emanations that stream from that mass of radite are more penetrating than any other. To the bodies of us radioactive men who wearily wander immortally over this planet, those powerful emanations of the radite are stimulating, as sunlight is to you. There are always some of us radioactive men gathered about that radite, basking in the grateful radiation from it.
'And all these poor creatures like myself will resist your taking the radite. For to bask in its emanations is almost the only pleasure they have in this terrible mockery of existence. Yet, with the safety of Earth and the inner worlds at stake, I will help you attempt to take the radite.'
Nison turned heavily, and he and his radiant companion looked back at the Planeteers.
After a moment, he spoke to Thorn. “Follow us,” Nison's voice reached them. “We will lead you to the radite.'
As they started on westward across the shining desert, forging through the luminous blue haze beneath the dark, star-studded sky. An unearthly party — the three Planeteers in their grotesque black ray-proof space-suits, led by the two glowing radioactive men.
'It's like a nightmare” Gunner's voice reached Thorn, the Mercurian gripping his arm as they trudged along. “This hellish world, haunted by these pitiful ghosts of men.'
'No wonder Martin Cain wouldn't tell anyone about what he'd seen here, when he got back,” muttered Sual Av.
They forged on for hours, ever west across the dim desert. The Planeteers followed closely behind their glowing guides, but the three comrades were beginning to tire from the weight of their asterium-coated space- suits, while the two radioactive men showed no sign of fatigue.
'Damn the gravitation of this world!” Gunner gritted. “It's as strong as Earth's, and it shouldn't be half that strong on a little planet like this.'
'The huge radioactive core of this world gives it its unusual mass,” Sual Av declared. “And the radiation from it is responsible for the warmth that permits a gaseous atmosphere here,'
Thorn's heart quickened as he saw beyond their radiant guides, a low, barren dark range of mountains looming up through the haze.
'We're getting there!” Thorn cried eagerly.
Clymer Nison and his radioactive Martian comrade led them on through a pass between two peaks. The mountains towered a few thousand feet on either side, somber, bare rock slopes faintly luminous with the emanations throbbing from their radioactive atoms.
On into the tumbled peaks, through valleys thick with the shining blue haze, over long ridges, Nison led the way. For the space-pioneer who had wandered this dreary world for nine long centuries seemed to know each square yard of its surface.
They entered a deep chasm, a gloomy gorge with precipitous shining walls and a floor strewn with fallen masses of radiant rock. Along this the two radioactive men led the way. The shimmering sand of the chasm floor was deeply marked by a path, that had been trodden by many men coming and going in past times.
To the Planeteers, this gorge was an awesome and uncanny place. The great shining boulders through which the path wound, the feebly radiant cliffs that towered on either side, the strip of starry black sky far overhead, all combined to depress the spirit by their alien, forbidding atmosphere.
Through the blue, shimmering hazes that floated thick in the chasm, Clymer Nison and his companion led the way. At last Nison turned.
'The radite lies in a niche in the side of the cliff, just ahead,” he said heavily to the Planeteers. “We must be careful now, for there are almost sure to be some of my poor fellow sufferers near it, bathing in its rays.'
'I hope not,” Gunner Welk muttered. “If these radioactive men can't be killed, they'd be tough customers.'
They moved on, Nison and the glowing Martian leading, going more slowly and cautiously now.
