well shot to pieces. You want to know all I know about Roger?"

"Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, you
know. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you know
what I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wondering
whether he really _is_ human. He knows too much, about too many things.
He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems, to visit which would
require life-times. Then, too, he has dropped remarks which would imply
that he actually saw things that happened long before any living man
could possibly have been born. Finally, he looks--well, peculiar--and
certainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been able
to learn nothing about him; as you have said, such talk as this aboard
the planetoid was impossible."

"You needn't worry about being paid your price; that's one thing. If we
live--and that was part of the agreement, you know--we will all get what
we sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already made
millions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Chatelier has had and
will have his women, Anandrusung and Nishimura their cherished revenges.
Hartkopf his power, and so on." He eyed the other speculatively, then
went on:

"I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance and
since you should know what the rest of us do. You're in the same boat
with us and tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip, that
may or may not be true, but I know one very startling fact. Here it is.
My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in connection
with certain things I myself saw on the planetoid, prove beyond question
that our Roger went to Harvard University at the same time he did. Roger
was a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted that he was marked,
like this," and the American sketched a cabalistic design.

"What!" Baxter exclaimed. "An adept of North Polar Jupiter--_them?_"

"Yes. That was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was those
medicine-men--really high-caliber scientists--that prolonged that war
so...."

"But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped out
it was proved a lot of hocus-pocus...."

"Some of it was, but most of it wasn't," Penrose interrupted in turn.
"I'm not asking you to believe anything except that one fact; I'm just
telling you the rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knew
things and did things that take a lo