oulders. "We'll have to get busy, Mac," he added,
"and think up a new rank for you.

"And, yes, we are going to land," he continued in his customary tones;
"there may be survivors of our own crashes. But we'll have to count on
you, Mac, to show us around this little new world of yours."

* * * * *

There was an army waiting, as McGuire had warned, but it was waiting
to give punishment and not to take it. The vast expanse of the landing
field was swarming with them, and the open country beyond showed
columns of marching troops.

They had learned, too, to take shelter; barricades had been hastily
erected, and the men had shields to protect them from the fire of
small arms.

Their bodies were enclosed in their gas-tight uniforms whose ugly
head-pieces served only to conceal the greater ugliness beneath. They
met the ships as they landed with a showering rain of gas that was
fired from huge projectors.

"Not so good!" Blake was speaking in the safety of his ship. "We have
masks, but great heavens, Mac!--there must be a million of those
brutes. We can spray them with machine-gun fire, but we haven't
ammunition enough to make a dent in them. And we've got to get out and
get to our crashed ships."

He waited for McGuire's suggestions, but it was Althora who replied.

"Wait!" she said imperatively. She seemed to be listening to some
distant word. Then:

"Djorn is coming," she exclaimed, and her eyes were brilliantly
alight. "He says to you"--she pointed to McGuire--"that you were
right, that we must fight like hell sometimes to deserve our
heaven--oh, I told him what you said--and now he is coming with all
his men!"

"What the devil?" asked Blake in amazement. "How does she know?"

"Telepathy," McGuire explained: "she is talking with her brother, the
leader of the real inhabitants of Venus."

He told the wondering man briefly of his experience and of the people
themselves, the real owners of this world.

"But what can they do?" Blake demanded.

And McGuire assured him: "Plenty!"

* * * * *

He turned to Althora to ask, "How are they coming? How will they get
here?"

"They are marching underground; they have been coming for two days.
They knew of our being captured, but the people have been slow in
deciding to fight. Djorn dared not tell me of their coming; he feared
he might be too late.

"They will come out of that building," she said, and i