, and stepped out upon the vessel's deck.

The graybeard slammed the door and laughed savagely. "You'll make no
terms with the Black Caesar," he said. "This is the reign of the
proletariat. The bourgeois must die! So Lenin decreed!"

But he stopped suddenly and passed his hand over his forehead like a
man awakening from a dream.

"Surely the proletariat has already triumphed on earth?" he asked. "A
long time has passed, and daily we expect the summons to return and
establish the new world-order. What year is this? Is it not 2017? It
is so hard to reckon on Eros."

"On Eros?" thought Nat. "This is the year 2044," he answered. "You've
been dreaming, my friend. We've had our new world-order, and it's not
in the least like the one you and your friends anticipated."

"Gott!" screamed the old man. "Gott, you're lying to me, bourgeois!
You're lying, I tell you!"

* * * * *

So Eros was their destination! Eros, one of the asteroids, those tiny
fragments of a broken planet, lying outside the orbit of Mars. Some of
these little worlds, of which more than a thousand are known to exist,
are no larger than a gentleman's country estate; some are mere rocks
in space. Eros, Nat knew, was distinguished among them from the fact
that it had an eccentric orbit, which brought it at times nearer Earth
than any other heavenly body except the Moon.

Also that it had only been known for thirty years, and that it was
supposed to be a double planet, having a dark companion.

That was in Nat's mind as he ascended the bridge to where Axelson was
standing at the controls, with one of the graybeards beside him. The
door of his stateroom was open, and suddenly there scuttled out of it
one of the most bestial objects Nat had ever seen.

It was a Moon woman, a dwarfish figure, clothed in a shapeless garment
of spun cellulose, and in her arms she held a heavy-headed Moon baby,
whose huge chest stood up like a pyramid, while the tiny arms and legs
hung dangling down.

"Here is the bourgeois, Kommandant," said Nat's captor.

Axelson looked at Nat, eye meeting eye in a slow stare. Then he
relinquished the controls to the graybeard beside him, and motioned
Nat to precede him into the stateroom.

Nat entered. It was an ordinary room, much like that of the captain of
the ether-liner now stranded on the Moon. There were a bunk, chairs, a
desk and a radio receiver.

Axelson shut the door. He tried to speak and fail