I was free. Just the two of them, and me, in the room with the machines. As they left, the door in the back opened and Kolgar Novin, the Venusian, entered. Now they were all three together.
Hawkins left his throne and crossed the room to a control panel. “Now you’re a taxpayer, just like the rest, Slade.”
“I hear the price of air’s pretty high in these parts,” I said wryly, rubbing my finger around the collar.
Hawkins nodded. “We get a good rate for it.”
“And what if I don’t care to pay?”
Hawkins smiled. “We have methods of persuasion,” he said. “I was just about to demonstrate one of our best.”
He reached for a switch and nudged it down. Immediately that damnable collar tightened like a deadly hand around my neck. I felt the pressure increase.
“How do you like that, Slade?”
I didn’t. But I didn’t tell him that. I had decided the time had come for action. I flicked out my hands and drew the startled Martian, Ku Sui, toward me. Apparently the collar was such a foolproof protective device that they had gotten careless, for Ku Sui had been standing within my reach all the time Hawkins was talking.
I sensed the dry alien smell of the Martian, who was gesturing wildly to Hawkins. I got my hands around the Martian’s scrawny throat.
“Now I’ve got a collar on you!” I said, “And it doesn’t operate by remote control! How does it feel?”
“Hawkins—increase the pressure,” Ku Sui grated brokenly. “Kill him, Hawkins. He’s . . .choking . . .me!”
I looked up from the Martian and shouted at Hawkins, “Shut your machine off! Get the pressure down or I’ll kill Ku Sui!”
The grip of the collar around my throat was almost unbearable. I flexed my neck muscles and tried to fight the slowly intensifying grip of the collar, but my face was fiery red and I was having trouble breathing. I could hear the sound of my blood pounding through my veins.
“Shut it off, Hawkins! I’ll strangle the Martian!”
It was a mistake on my part to assume that Hawkins gave the faintest damn about what happened to his partner in crime. I kept increasing my grip on Ku Sui’s throat, and Hawkins up there at his control board kept tightening his grip on mine. Everything was starting to swim around my head, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.
“Don’t . . .call . . .my . . .bluff,” I gasped. I wrung Ku Sui’s leathery neck and hurled the corpse across the room at the motionless Venusian standing bewildered in the back. Venusians have a way of freezing up when there’s trouble, and I was thankful Kolgar Novin wasn’t taking a hand in the action.
I saw Hawkins through a red haze. He was obviously surprised that I still hadn’t succumbed to the choking, but he didn’t seem very disturbed about Ku Sui. I gasped in as much air as I could and began the slow, leaden- footed climb up the steps to the control panel.
I saw Hawkins go white with fear as I approached. I was moving slowly, deliberately, my head swimming and my eyes popping from my head.
“Why don’t you drop?” he asked in terror. “Why don’t you choke?”
“I’m too tough for you!” I said. He started to scream for the guards, but I reached up, plucked him away from his control panel, and hurled him over the railing into the middle of the floor. He went flying heels over head like a chubby little basketball, and bounced on the concrete.
He continued to moan loudly for his guards, and Kolgar Novin was still a statue at the far end of the room.
Desperately, I reached for the lever he had been pushing down and I hurled it as far up as it would go. The collar opened immediately, and the air went rushing into my lungs. I reeled against the railing, trying to recover, as the blood left my head and the room tilted crazily around me.
Then I heard footsteps outside, and the door broke open. The Guards! I made up my mind what I was going to do in an instant.
I started smashing my fists into the delicate machinery, raging up and down the room destroying whatever I could. I ripped up the intricate wiring and watched blue sparks lick through the bowels of the giant electronic brain and the smaller computers, watched the whole edifice of terror come crashing down. I pulled out levers and used them as clubs to bash in the dials and vernier gauges, and when I was through I turned to see what the guards were doing.
To my surprise, I saw they were struggling among themselves. They were divided—half of them, the most evil half, were still loyal to Hawkins, while the others, the native Callistans impressed into the guards, were rebelling now that they saw the overlords were destroyed, their machines of coercion in rubble. I saw one guard rip off his collar and hurl it into the ruined machines with a shout of savage glee.
There still was a nucleus of guards clustered around Hawkins and Ku Sui, but their numbers were growing smaller as more and more of them realized the game was up for the three tyrants.
Then the room was suddenly crowded, and I smiled happily. June and her brother had roused the people! They were coming! I leaned against the railing, weak with strain, and watched as the angry, newly-free Callistans swept the remaining guards out of the way and exacted a terrible revenge on Hawkins and Kolgar Novin and even the dead body of Ku Sui.
The lynching was over eventually, and the guards, taking charge in the name of the people, managed to restore some semblance of order. Blankets were thrown over the mutilated bodies on the floor.
Then, with grim methodicality, the Callistans completed the job of wrecking Hawkins’ machines. The room was a shambles by the time they were through.
June finally made her way through the confusion to my side. She looked up in concern, and ran her fingers gently over the angry red lines the collar had left on my throat.
“You were wonderful,” she said. She was crying from relief and gratitude, and I took her in my arms and held her.
Then I released her. “Let’s go downstairs,” I said. “I need some fresh air after that battle.”
We left the building and I stood in the warm artificial sunlight of Callisto City, recovering my strength.
“I’ve heard how you overthrew them,” June said. “But I don’t understand how you survived the choking.”
“I’m stubborn,” I said simply. I was hiding the truth from her—the bitter truth that I wanted no one to know. “I just wouldn’t let them strangle me, that’s all.” I grinned.
She took a deep breath. “You know, I just thought of something—we’re not wearing collars, and yet we don’t mind the air! It’s not polluted any more!”
I stopped to consider that, and then shook my head in disgust as the obvious answer came to me. “Those worms! You know what was causing the pollution?”
“No,” she said.
“It must have been maintained artificially by one of those machines up there! I remember, now—Hawkins was quite a chemist. He must have synthesized some chemical that polluted this air, and then gave your father enough leads so he could develop a filter to counteract it. It was a devilishly well-planned scheme, neatly calculated to reduce Callisto City to a state of servitude!”
We took a few steps away. It was bright midday, but I could see the bulk of Jupiter high in the sky above the dome. In the great square in front of the capitol building, a huge golden mountain was growing—a heap of discarded collars, getting bigger and bigger by the moment as the Callistans hurled the impotent symbols of their slavery into the junkheap. For the first time, I saw smiling, happy faces on Callisto. The air was pure again, and the time of troubles was over. It didn’t cost anything to breathe on Callisto any more.
The happiest face of all was June’s. She was beaming radiantly, glowing with pride and happiness. “I’m glad I decided to rescue you,” she said. “You looked so brave, and strong, and—lonely. So I took a chance and pulled you away.”
I looked at her sadly, not saying anything.
“Where will you stay?” she asked. “There’s a flat available next door to mine—”
I shook my head. “No. I’m leaving. I must leave immediately.”
The sunshine left her face at once, and she looked at me in surprise and shock. “Leaving?”
