d I
know----"

"Escape!" Luke snorted. "You _are_ crazy. Where you goin' to go?"

"Listen, Fenton." The other dropped his voice. "I'm not doing this
blindly; I have friends outside. And you can help me. You can get away
yourself, alive. I called you a fool and by that I meant that you have
relied too much on brute force in your lifetime and had not sense enough
to realize that this brought only trouble. Combine your brawn with my
brains, now, and do as I say--if you will I promise you freedom. Will
you do it, or do you want to keep on being a fool?"

Luke bristled, but the earnestness of that steady gaze served to check
his rising temper. "I still think you're nuts," he growled, "but hell, I
ain't fool enough to pass up any kind of chance of gettin' outa here.
Gimme the dope."

Fuller coughed slightly and a fleck of red-tinged foam appeared at his
lips. "It'll have to be to-day," he whispered. "One more day in this
place and it'll be too late for me."

X.C.! Luke stared, horrified. Fuller had it already and didn't know it.
Poor devil; he was a goner before he started this crazy break of his.
Strangely, Luke was deeply concerned. It was a new experience, this
feeling of compassion for a fellow man.

"To-day!" he grunted. "You ain't figurin' on gettin' out to-day?"

"Positively--it must be to-day. I'll explain."

* * * * *

Much of what followed was unintelligible to Luke Fenton, but he absorbed
enough of the scientist's explanation to understand that his plan was
not impossible of realization. He waxed enthusiastic.

Tom Fuller was vague concerning his own past, but Luke gathered that a
political crime had been responsible for his sentence to the Workshop.
There was much bitterness in the scientist's refusal to dwell on this
point. This, too, Luke was able to understand. The bond between them
strengthened.

"It's like this," Fuller told him: "these suits which enable us to move
about comfortably in Vulcan's gravity are really quite simple in their
functioning. A maze of fine wires is woven into the fabric, and these
wires are charged with anti-gravity energies from tiny capsules which
are inserted under the belt of the garment. The capsules are really
miniature atomic generators and are replaced with fresh ones each night
during the sleeping period, since the initial charge lasts only eighteen
hours. The generated energies neutralize more than eighty percent of the
e