That is Grantline!
Trickery!_"

From the ship the summons came: "_Come up._"

We had won this first encounter! Miko must have realized his
disadvantage. His distant light went out.

"Come, Anita."

There was no retreat now. But again I seemed to feel in the pressure
of her hand that vague farewell.

Her voice whispered, "We must do our best, act our best to be
convincing."

In the white glow of a search-beam we climbed the crags, reached the
broad upper ledge. Helmeted figures rushed at us, searched us for
weapons, seized our helmet lights. The evil face of a giant Martian
peered at me through the visors. Two other monstrous, towering figures
seized Anita.

We were shoved toward the port-locks at the base of the ship's hull.
Above the hull bulge I could see the grids of projectors mounted in
the dome-side, and the figures of men standing on the deck, peering
down at us.

We went through the admission locks into a hull corridor, up an
incline passage, and reached the lighted deck. Our helmets were taken
off. The Martian brigands crowded around us.

CHAPTER XXIX

_On the Brigand Ship_

Anita's words echoed in my memory: "We must act our best to be
convincing." It was not her ability that I doubted as much as my own.
She had played the part of George Prince cleverly, unmasked only by an
evil chance.

I steeled myself to face the searching glances of the brigands as they
shoved around us. This was a desperate game into which we had plunged!
For all our acting, how easy it would be for some small chance thing
abruptly to undo us! I realized it, and now, as I gazed into the
peering faces of these men from Mars, I cursed my witless rashness
which had brought Anita into this!

The brigands--some ten or fifteen of them here on the deck--stood in a
ring around us. They were all big men, nearly of a seven-foot
average, dressed in leather jerkins and short leather breeches, with
bare knees and flaring leatherboots. Piratical swaggering fellows,
knife-blades mingled with small hand-projectors fastened to their
belts. Gray, heavy faces, some with scraggling, unshaved beard. They
plucked at us, jabbering in Martian.

One of them seemed the leader. I said sharply, "Are you the commander
here? I speak not Ilton[4] well. You speak the Earth English?"

[Footnote 4: Ilton, the ruling race and official language of the
Martian Union.]

"Yes," he said readily, "I am Commander here." He spoke English with
the same f