As for the cullers, the rule was simplicity itself. They were sent out in groups, unguarded, clad in armored suits containing water and air enough for twenty hours' operation. If, within twenty hours, they brought back as many tons of ore, they were admitted to the dome and given food and rest, then sent out again. If not, they stayed outside to die of asphyxiation or thirst.
When the sun was shining, the plain was blindingly bright and searingly hot. When the sun was on the far side, all was bleak and bitingly cold. And unceasingly the cullers were subjected to the hazard of pelting meteors, which fell with terrific velocity and usually burst into a thousand hurtling fragments on impact.
"You see," explained Heim one day, "the whole set-up of these fields is to protect the domed craters. There are towers set at strategic points, which set up magnetic strains in the void overhead, attracting all the loose stuff to these chosen areas. The meteor falls are so heavy and so constant, these areas would soon be buried deep unless the fragments were continually picked up and carted away.
"Our rulers combine the need of doing that with punishment of criminals, so they send us. The mortality is terrific, but who cares? There are plenty of us. Besides, they get quite a lot of valuable by-products, such as platinum, iridium and diamonds."
Winchester gritted his teeth and hung on.
One night, after a quota haul done in less than ten hours, he and Heim and others were gathered around the mess table, singing. A former spaceship hand had made a guitar of sorts out of scraps of wood and bits of wire, and it was he who strummed the accompaniment.
The gaiety was forced, because all were dead tired, but they acted their parts vigorously, knowing that it irritated the guards to see any reaction but cowed misery.
Heim would lead off, and all would join in the refrain, thumping merrily on the table.
Oh, have you seen my Martian love,
The one that is so sweet?
She's feathered like a turtle-dove
With pseudopoda for feet.
Oh, she's grand, she's tops, she's neat,
She's a monster, sure — but awfully sweet!
Oh, have you seen my Martian girl,
The one that is so fair,
And note how quaintly her antennae curl,
How wondrous green her hair?
Oh, have you seen my Martian maid,
The one I love so well?
Her snout plates are of purest jade,
To match her tummy scale.
They all jumped up and did a snake dance around the room, bellowing out the refrain while amazed guards looked on. A petty officer quietly sneaked from the room, a worried look on his face. The next stanza was led off by Winchester.
Oh, have you seen that Martian lass,
The one who drives me wild?
Her breath is purest methane gas
and leaves me quite beguiled.
Oh, have you seen my Martian belle,
The one with the lidless eyes?
It's true she cannot kiss so well,
But — golly, boy! — she tries!
Oh, she's grand, she's tops, she's swell,
She's a monster —
Suddenly the clamor of a gong drowned the song. A door slid open and a fully armed captain of the guards stood on the threshold.
"We have been watching you men," announced the guard captain, after an ominous pause, "and it appears we have been too easy on you. I have reported the matter to the Commandant and he agrees that other duty is in order. The van is at the portal. Fall in — and stand at attention! As your numbers are called, step forward."
CHAPTER VII
Transplanted Planet
No inmate of the ferrous industry's big No. 4 plant ever saw the massive dome that covered it. All one could see, looking upward from the grimy crater floor, were rolling clouds of sulfurous smoke lit by the glare of blast furnaces, or the riotous shower of sparks as some ingot mold overflowed.
Gigantic rollers flattened out the white-hot billets fed to them, or squeezed them into strange shapes. The place had a strong flavor of the Inferno of the ancients, and the illusion was completed by the occasional glimpse of half-naked, sweating men tending the hot machines.
These were the condemned, and perched in elevated nests about the place were the demons — the ever-present slave guards.
Winchester had a place in it. Stripped to his loin cloth, he tended a huge stamp that pounded and roared, crushing the endless stream of iron-oxide brought to it by a conveyor. From the stamp the rusty fragments flowed over sorting screens, and then fell into squat gondolas crawling along on the tracks beneath.
From time to time a ponderous, atomic-powered locomotive would come and drag away the loaded cars. For days Winchester watched the spectacle in dull wonder. Iron-rust deliberately produced in oxygen furnaces and exported by the millions of cubic yards! And this in a place where virgin metallic iron could be had for the picking up, and oxygen literally worth its weight in diamonds!
Something nudged Winchester, and he heard a shout in his ear.
"Let that go!" yelled a guard, cupping his hands to make himself heard above the din. "Get down on the floor — a new detail for you!"
Winchester nodded and dropped the wrench he had in his hand. He had learned the folly of resisting every little order. He must save his fight for the really big issue that was sure to come. That is, if he could only stick it out long enough.
He clambered down the rickety ladders to the cinder-strewn floor. A three-hundred-car train of loaded cars blocked any further movement except along the track. Another guard jerked a thumb and Winchester turned in that direction.
Hundreds of feet along, he came to another group of guards standing beside what proved to be the last car of the train. They motioned for him to climb its steps and enter. He did, and noted with mild surprise that its doors were fitted with gaskets and holding-down dogs, and that the car windows were similarly equipped. In fact, the caboose had more the appearance of a ship's compartment than of a railroad coach.
Winchester settled himself without a word on one of the longitudinal benches. There were other convicts with him — red star men, all — but none he knew. They were big huskies and apparently inured to hard labor. Bundles of short-handled scoops tied with wire filled the rear corner of the car.
Presently a guard came in and closed and sealed the doors and ports. The train slowly started off. It proceeded a little way, then stopped. After that it went on, but in utter darkness, until after a time it emerged into the brilliant light of the sun-flooded Lunar plain.
"A life-size airlock, that," commented one of the prisoners.
"Yeah," agreed the man next to him. "Smack through the crater rim. Wonder what's up?"
"Dunno. Heard something about their building a new Martian Embassy over in Sevinus. His nibs, the ambassador, gets homesick for his deserts. That's what all this rust is for, I think. It costs plenty, but what of it? He's got it. Married a sister of that slant-eyed Prince Lohan, I hear — "
"Pipe down, you two," snarled a guard, and the conversation stopped.
The train skirted the plain, which was evidently one of the meteor-bombarded