"Not alive. I won't be much good to you dead, will I?"
After a moment Sampson re-holstered his gun. He looked around at the others.
Someone said, "We can get along without that son."
Sampson growled at him. "Shut up. We can't. You'd have been sucked dry by that spider-thing yesterday if Garth hadn't seen it in time. He knows where to walk in this hell-hole."
Garth didn't say anything. He waited, holding his gun with casual lightness.
Sampson glared. "What do you want, then?"
"I want you to keep going--finish what you started."
"Then we'll come back. I got you in here, and I'm the only man on Ganymede who can get you out."
Sampson's eyes narrowed. "Suppose we say yes. You can't keep a gun on us all the time. We might jump you. There are ways of making a man do things he doesn't want to do."
"Sure," Garth admitted, "you could torture me. Only that wouldn't help."
Sampson's gaze flicked past to the girl. Garth said quickly, "That wouldn't help either. Here's why. The antitoxin I gave you was too old. It isn't working the way it ought. Captain Brown was the first man to go under. But within three days, at the latest, every damn one of you will have Noctoli poison!"
Garth thought Sampson was going to shoot him then and there. A yell went up from the men.
Sampson's lifted hand quieted them. The giant was pale under his spaceburn.
Garth nodded. "It's on the beam. Yeah. It'll take you a week to get out of the Forest, and you won't last that long, even if you force me to guide you. I don't think you can do that, anyway. But even if you did--within three days you'll be like the Captain. Walking dead men! You'll be okay at night, but you can't travel at night. By day you'll be living statues, sitting in the Forest waiting for the bloodsucker plants to come along and drain your blood, waiting for the poisonous butterflies to paralyze you and lay their eggs under your skin, waiting--you've seen what sort of things live in the Forest. Every day you'll be helpless. You can't run. Some night you'll wake up with your legs chewed off, or the butterfly maggots eating you alive. Like that? Well, that's what you'll get--and I'm the _only_ guy that can save you!"
The faces of the men told Garth that his shots had gone home. The deadly menace of the forest, lurking always in the background, had worked into their nerves. Sampson's big hands clenched.