d.

The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his
back turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter
was plunged beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his
heart.

Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks--stone dead. Quickly
the murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within the
hangar. Then he returned to the flier.

Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removed
the cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination
compass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism
beneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer,
and removed it again to note the resultant change in the position
of the parts affected by the act.

A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped off
the projection which extended through the dial from the external
pointer--now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial
without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern
hemisphere dial was useless.

Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon
a certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also,
and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the
pointer.

As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed
his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was
as efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the
pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of
the mechanism beneath--and the device was set, immovably, upon a
destination of the slave's own choosing.

Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his
gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who
stood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that
ran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant
memory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man--
then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the
Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions,
though below the surface his heart was cold with dread, for what
contingencies confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.

First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok
of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously
with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes
at Dusar in honour of the return o