"How many guys did they get?"
"Six. And there would been two more if this fellow didn't have what it takes."
Winchester opened his eyes. The bruises and cuts smarted, but he sat up. Someone had put crude bandages on him, after dragging him out of the reach of the pitcher-plant.
"Where to now?" he asked.
"Central Receiving — same place you landed when you first came out. It's close by and a handier place to lock us for the rest period than to put up camps in the desert. Oh, we'll be back. There's more funny stuff to be planted in that crater before his nibs, the Martian ambassador, thinks it looks like Home, Sweet Home. Not only plants but animals. Like neuriverons, for example."
"Neuriverons?"
"Yeah — Martian thrill-suckers. A kind of mosquito. It's what they call 'analectric.' That's the opposite of electric. Instead of giving off current, they live on it. They're tough on exposed wiring, and can drill anything but armored cable. They like human currents, too — that's why they call 'em neuriverons.
"A cloud of 'em will pester you, buzzing and stinging, until you get fighting mad. Then they close up and sink their drills into you — into nerves, if they can find 'em. Ten or twelve will drive a man into fits. Some people go stark crazy. A comfy place, Mars is!"
But Winchester learned no more about Mars that day. The train was slowing for the airlock. In a few minutes he would be back at the place where he first started as a branded criminal.
A gate guard checked off each man as he entered, and another handed each his ration for the day — a greasy black pellet compounded of just the food elements needed, and no more. This and an occasional swig of synthetic water was all the nourishment a convict rated. In the hydroponic gardens of Hipparchus, they said, vegetables of every sort grew profusely. But these were for the masters.
The detail filed on into the circular open space under the main dome and threw themselves down on the sand. They could sleep or rest so many hours, then their trick would go on again. Winchester was glad to notice his friend Heim, squatting in another group not ten yards away.
"How ya doing?" grinned Heim, looking at the American's bandages.
Heim held out his own hands for exhibition. They were stained to the elbows a brilliant, bilious green. Winchester took a look around, saw no guards were watching, so he rolled across the intervening space and joined his former gang-mate. For an hour they chatted, comparing notes.
Heim was working at the quarantine station. For a week he had been dipping Uranian trabblenuts in a strongly antiseptic fluid, so as to rid them of the dangerous mold spores originating in that far-off planet. Due to some peculiarity of the trabblenut's shell, it was a job that had to be done by hand. An interplanetary fruiter had just brought in ten thousand tons of them.
As they talked on about various topics, Winchester learned more details of the warped civilization into which he had blundered. All his race, for one thing, were not slaves or convicts by any means. There were many classes and gradations.
In Cosmopolis, the industrial center, nearly all the key posts were held by Westerners. They lived on a decent scale, and the more important of them were even allowed a domestic slave or so. From the so-called "free labor" class, up to the superintendents, men were holding the same jobs they would have held before the Mongoloids took over.
"The difference is," explained Heim, "that our fathers worked only a tenth as hard and got more for it. But in those days, they produced the necessities and common luxuries, not the useless expensive things these present-day rulers want. Imagine having an embroidered carpet a mile square made for use at a single garden party, to be burned afterwards because it is soiled with spilled wine and food!"
Winchester growled softly.
"Of course," Heim went on, "there is still plenty of useful work done. For that even the Mongoloids need technicians, so they let people of that class pretty much alone. That goes for scientists and a lot of other specialists. The rule is that if you are useful to them, you get by. You could get out of here in twenty-four hours if you would play their game."
"Like what?"
"Turn stool, if you can't do anything else. A lot of these guards got their start that way."
"When I sell my soul," said Winchester, "it will be for a better price than any you've mentioned."
Just then there was a commotion at the outer door. After a moment's delay, a strange-looking group of men was brought in and led across the arena. They were accompanied by guards, but it was plain to see that they were not slaves; nor did they have the hard, strained look of convicts.
Moreover, most of them were richly dressed. Their costumes were of gay-colored silks and satins, in many cases embroidered with gold lace. They staggered as they walked, as if slightly tipsy, and here and there a solicitous guard offered a helping hand.
"There is still another class," whispered Heim, pointing. "These are artists. That fellow in the white velvet is a great composer. The guy directly behind him is a poet. The rest are sculptors, dramatists, novelists and such. For one reason or another, they are washed up and through with conscious life.
"They are on their way now to the Crater of Dreams. They will never work again, but from now on will live in a golden haze created by their own imagination — maybe for years and years."
Winchester looked puzzled.
"It's the dope-pit they're going to, to put it another way," Heim explained. "A place filled with wild Venusian Lotus. Lotus fruit will keep a man alive indefinitely, but its fumes are maddening. Once a man has been exposed to it, he becomes an incurable addict. After that he only lives to dream.
"Look!" Heim exclaimed a moment later.
Now the intellectuals were retracing their steps to the port by which they had entered. But whereas they were bareheaded when they first came, now each wore a gleaming helmet. The metal covered only the top and back of the skull. A metallic chin-strap held it on, leaving the features uncovered and free.
"There's the answer. Those helmets are locked on. They are telepath-transmitters, and each has its own special wavelength. The overlord who owns an artist is given the corresponding receiver. He can listen in at will on his subject's dreams, enjoy the exhilaration of a high-grade mind under the stimulus of the universe's most potent drug — yet suffer none of the bad physical effects.
"Suppose you loved music. Imagine what gorgeous symphonies that fellow in white will think of when he is hopped up with Lotus!"
"Yes," muttered Winchester darkly. "But think of the things some other men think when they are drugged."
"Exactly. They use this type, too. The last chief executioner was retired and sent there. I understand he inspires his successor. These Mongoloids employ an incredible number of ways to put a man to death. Then there are other varieties of dreams. They have hooked up some so they can be broadcast. They do that at their annual feasts."
Winchester bit his lip to conceal his intense disgust.
Ten work periods came and went and the Martian Embassy neared completion. By dint of hard work and implicit obedience, Winchester had made himself a sort of unofficial strawboss. Guards ceased to prod him, often gave him a handful of men to manage, and left him alone to do what was assigned.
It was one morning, just as the gang had been lined up for the march to the train, when strident trumpet calls rent the air. Gongs sounded and the loud-speaker system bellowed.
"Down, slaves! Down all. Remain at kow-tow until the order to rise. Guards below the rank of captain will do the same. Attention! The great prince approaches."
The prisoners sullenly bared their shoulders and dropped to their knees. Then they pillowed their faces in the sand, in the absurdly grotesque humiliation of the kow-tow. Winchester risked a peek and saw the lesser guards follow suit. There was a moment of tense silence, then the abased throng could hear the rustle of silks and soft