arding him with anxious gaze.

* * * * *

A little later they made their way forward to the control room. The
_Nomad_ had taken off and was drifting slowly higher. At the controls
sat a strange, bedaubed figure. Nazu!

Mado was peering through the coils of a helix of silver ribbon that had
been erected beside the rulden.

"Father!" Ora darted past him and dropped to her knees on the
floor-plates at the Martian's side. The body of Detis was slumped there
a ghastly corpse within those gleaming coils. But his kind features were
fixed in a serene smile. He had gone to his reward with content in his
heart.

Only then did Carr remember. One could not subject his body to the
reversed energies of the rulden without certain expectation of death. A
few short seconds with those terrible oscillations surging through his
being, carrying the amplified visual and oral reproduction through the
ether, and the Europan scientist had perished. Knowingly, willingly,
Detis had given his life that the rest of them might live! Recovered
miraculously from his first serious injury, he had done this magnificent
thing deliberately and gladly....

A great lump rose in Carr's throat as Ora's sobbing came to his ears.
With his vision blurred by tears, he turned to the pilot's seat, where
Nazu faced him with solemn eyes.

"Nazu go now," the amazing young Titanese stated. He spoke in halting
syllables of Cos, the language of the inner planets!

* * * * *

Carr stared agape, scarcely believing his ears.

"Detis great man," Nazu continued, relinquishing his seat to the dazed
Earthman. "Nazu find him in ship. My people already there with him. They
want to help when you come. Return after capture and heal dart wound of
Detis. Bring wire and help him fix motors. Work very quick, my people.
Detis have brain machine. Talk with Nazu; teach him words, also very
quick. Nazu tell where you are and we come to help. Then he scare away
red men--and die. That is all. Now I go--and you go also. Quickly."

"So that's how it happened," Carr muttered, slowly mulling over the
amazing things he had heard. He watched the Titanese lad keenly as his
eyes wandered in Mado's direction. He saw the admiring light that came
into them as the big Martian removed the body of Detis from the helix
and carried it gently away.

"Wait a minute," he interposed, as Nazu made as if to leave. "Mado would
like to talk