in loosed a
bolt of electronic fire at it, but it left no mark.

There was no sound from within. Evidently the Plutonians were either
busy about their own business, or did not regard the Neptunians as worth
their attention.

In a covered panel right next to the door, Burl found the typical
Sun-tap controls. He tried to work them, but they would not function
through his gloves.

He hesitated, knowing that removing his glove this time might prove very
risky. Then he hastily drew off his left gauntlet and the thin nylon
glove that was the inner protection of his suit. He placed his hand on
the control. The icy cold bit into it. He twisted, the control worked,
and he tore his hand away, replacing the gloves.

The door slid open. Burl ran inside, followed by half a dozen
Neptunians. They were in a small antechamber, evidently an air lock.

The Neptunians, leaping with excitement, did not bother to activate the
inner door, which would have meant closing the outer door. Instead, they
attacked it with heavy ice axes. The strange tools, chilled to a
hardness unthinkable on Earth, bit into the fragile plastic.

After a few hard blows, the plastic split, and there was a small
explosion as the air within the temple burst through. A gale of escaping
gases roared through the little chamber, ripping the rest of the door to
shards and hurling the Neptunians right and left. Outside, the flow
began to congeal, and a thin snow of liquid air began to fall.

When the blast subsided after several minutes, the Neptunians jumped up,
shook off the new gas-snow, and charged through the doorway into the
temple itself.

Burl held his Plutonian flashgun at the ready. Inside, they found chaos
and disaster. In the great rooms and halls Plutonians writhed on the
floors, in the last throes of suffocation and freezing, now that the air
had been ripped from their stronghold.

The walls bore brilliant paintings and sharply defined sculptures.
Advancing with the ranks of stick-men, Burl caught glimpses of strange
scenes on distant planets, of landscapes that must have been Pluto at
one time, beneath a double sun that probably was its original parent.

Burl became faintly aware of a distant clanging. Not all the air was
gone, he thought; it must be pouring out in slower volume as the
pressure diminished. Somewhere an alarm was ringing.

The Neptunians fell behind; he saw now that the floor and walls of the
temple were still too hot for them. Th