"What caused these abnormalities?"

"Well, you know—" Lents was speaking judiciously. "You know all about the mutations produced by X-rays in the biological laboratories?"

"Of course!" For approximately a million years these actions of X-rays had been understood—their ability to bring about extraordinary mutations in the life-germ, whether animal or vegetable—the acceleration of natural evolution a millionfold. "But you don't mean to say the First Race deliberately brought about these mutations in the Mugs?"

"Not deliberately. But they permitted it with utter callousness. You know those hydrogen integrators we saw at a distance in the dark half of The Bubble. Those things are the source of most of the power used by the Jovians. But the generators have a mighty dangerous by-product—the cosmic ray series, for instance, a particularly destructive band below the X-ray spectrum too."

Sine nodded comprehension, his eyes hardening as he thought of the grotesque, distorted wreck of humanity who was Proserpina's father. A mere whim of fortune that he had not been condemned to that hell before she was born, or she might have been one of those unfortunate mutations—

Might yet become one! Not only could the rays deform the offspring. They could distort the full-grown, normal body. Sine felt increasingly dismayed as he thought of this immature, quiet-eyed girl, this waif of an alien world. He experienced a recurrence of the indignation he had previously felt. This selfish, superior First Race! Condemning the weaker people to torture and death so they could enjoy a little paradise! The Pleasure Bubble they called it. Sphere of the Damned was better! For the unfortunate consigned to the dark hemisphere was condemned to an inferno that surpassed the Ancient's most perfervid imagination.

"I wish we could save Proserpina!"

The words were out before Sine knew it. Kass stopped in the middle of a sentence and lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

"Oh, get the romantic ideas out of your heads!" Sine snapped. "You know she's just a kid. I couldn't take care of her if we did take her back to Earth. But I'd like to take her out of The Bubble!"

Lents pulled at his toga thoughtfully. It was dirty, still wet, and smelled not too pleasantly.

"I could take care of her," he said slowly, and his deep bass voice was a little wistful. "My wife would be glad—we're getting old, and no children—"

"We-ell," Kass submitted practically. "I'd like to take her away, and her poor old daddy too—or is he old? But what's the use of discussing all that? Here we are prisoners, and she's a prisoner of the First Race, and we shall never see her again. Or the good old Earth either," he added sadly.

A man entered the room. He looked more like a normal man than might have been expected—only his exaggerated dish-face, his bulbous forehead proclaiming him just another victim of the First Race's industries. Or his shrill, treble voice as he announced:

"Gentlemen of Earth, the Manager and his council expect you in the office. Follow me." He turned, waited for them to come.

The Manager's messenger led them up a long, ascending tunnel meagerly lighted at intervals by small emanation tablets. After they had gone perhaps a hundred yards the hewn rock gave way to what was evidently a kind of concrete.

"This part of their city is built above the ocean floor," Kass remarked quietly. "They brought us in through airlocks. Passages lead to caves along the shore where the original refugees holed up. These are mostly their children, so marked and deformed even in embryo."

Their dish-faced guide now stepped aside as they entered a spacious chamber with a domed ceiling. Here and there it was wet. No doubt above there was the sea. Lents made a rapid mental calculation, rumbled into Sine's ear:

"Can't be so deep. Not over a hundred feet; maybe less. Otherwise those arches couldn't carry the weight."

A hush fell upon the room. The leader of this strange people—the one they called The Manager, was rising from his seat back of a desk. His head was very large, his eyes large, liquid and expressive. A total lack of eyebrows, of hair on his head, gave a mixture of the comical and the obscene to his appearance. But the respect with which his counselors, ranged on either side of him, regarded him, ignored his appearance. They were all, without exception, victims of the strange and terrible mutations of type induced by the First Race's callous disregard to the dangers of the rays. All wore loose garments of drab material which concealed their deformities to some extent.

The Manager's large, intense eyes fastened on the Earthmen, and he addressed them:

"Men of Earth: We have captured you in battle, but we would be friends with the Old World. Why did you try to fight us?"

"You were murdering helpless victims," Sine said shortly. "It was not our fight, but we could not stand by and permit such a thing."

Something like amusement flashed up in The Manager's enormous eyes, so old, weary and wise.

"So you could not bear to think of an easy death for those of the First Race? What think you of their treatment of us?" He raised a scrawny arm—so thin it suggested a skeleton. "Hunted like beasts—imprisoned and tortured! Are we not human?"

"You see," Kass interposed diplomatically—"we were their guests. And in a way their quarrel...."

The Manager cut him short peremptorily:

"You were their guests! You lolled with them in The Pleasure Bubble, in the beautiful sun! The sun that most of us have never seen! And down in the dark half-human beings like yourselves—toiled and slaved at those devilish integrators to keep the machinery of pleasure going.

"You were the guests in the Governor's palace—in the magnificent city of Rubio, though to you it may seem dismal. But did you think of the poor slaves, deep underground, in the slimy sewers, in the uranium pits, in the power plants? You basked in luxury with the First Race, and their fight was your fight—their enemies...."

He was working himself into a fury, evidently forgetting the original purpose of this conference with the prisoners. But one of the counselors now approached him, bowed respectfully so that his scaly face was hidden. The Manager cut short his tirade.

"What is it, Gnom?"

"Isn't The Manager digressing?" Gnom asked in a hollow voice. "These men of Earth are now our guests. They come at an opportune time—when we shall reap the fruits of our long planning. If we wrest power from the First Race, shall we not need the friendship of the Mother Planet? Let them, then, carry our story to Earth, if it be that we may need their help."

The Manager stood in thought. At last, coming to a decision, he asked sharply:

"With whom do you stand, men of Earth? With us or our oppressors?"

Kass and Lents looked at one another blankly. They started as Sine spoke up sonorously, beside them:

"Officially, we are supposed to be neutral. But if you attack The Bubble and rescue the poor devils in the dark hemisphere I'll help!"

But The Manager shook his enormous head slightly.

"That we can not do. That satellite is too far out in space. There is no concealment, and we can not yet fight their patrol ships in space."

"Listen!" Sine persisted. "There is a man there I know. He's about ready to die, unless he gets away. And he has a girl, a kid of fourteen or fifteen. The rays haven't made a freak out of her yet. I want to save her. Give me a ship and I'll take her out myself!"

"That we can not do. Individuals do not count. One, or a hundred, may die. We can not endanger our plan."

The counselors had drawn a little away from the Earthmen, unconsciously symbolizing their support to The Manager. Again he raised his bony arm.

"Up above there our ships are destroying every city of the First Race on the planet. Our power-beams for the glowing ships are encircling Jupiter in a network of red and