o' Porno. Thus it allowed Leithgow and Carse to come and
go with but faint chance of being observed, and the steady watch kept
through the laboratory's telescopic instruments lessened even that.
And even if their movements to and from the laboratory had been
observed, a spy could have discovered little, so ingeniously was the
camouflage contrived to use to best advantage the natural features of
the landscape.

At this spot en Satellite III there was a small lake, long rather than
wide. At its shallow end, the lake lost itself in marshy, thick-grown
swamps; at its deep end it washed against the slopes of a low, rounded
hill. Topping the hill was a rude ranch-house, which to the casual eye
would appear the unimportant habitation of some poor jungle-squatter,
with beds of various vegetables and fruits growing around it, and
guarded against the jungle's animals by what looked like a makeshift
fence. The ground inside the fence had been cleared save for a few
thick, dead stumps of oxi trees, gnarled and weather-beaten, which
made the whole outlay look crude and desolate.

So desolate, so poor, so humble, as not to deserve a second glance
from the lowest of scavenger or pirate ships. So misleading!

* * * * *

Carse had brought the invisible asteroid to a halt perhaps a half mile
above the hill. The minutes were slipping by, bringing the two-hour
deadline ever closer, but he did not skimp his customary caution on
approaching the laboratory. From the control room, he swept the
electelscope over the surrounding terrain, and soon sighted the band
of isuanacs Eliot Leithgow had mentioned.

Through the 'scope's magnifying mirrors they seemed but yards away,
though they were wandering knee-deep in the marshes at the far end of
the lake. All their repulsive details stood out clearly.

More beasts than men, were such isuanacs (pronounced ee-swan-acs), so
called from the drug that had betrayed them step by step to a pit in
which there was no intelligence, no light, no hope--nothing but their
mind-shattering craving. In many and unpredictable ways did the drug
ravish their bodies. They were outcasts from the port of outcasts,
driven out of Porno into the wilderness, where they tracked out their
miry ways searching ever for the isuan weed until some animal ended
their enslavement, or the drug itself finally killed them in
convulsions. They were the legion of the damned.

This band of half a dozen w