the
passage. "Where is he, I say? Bring me that Martian, Jarl! He'll know,
if anyone does. Bring him, I say, and I'll torture the truth out of his
big carcass!"

* * * * *

Winford's grin vanished. His eyes grew anxious as he waited, tense and
breathless, until Jarl, with his big hands lashed together behind his
back, was brought up from the hold.

"So we meet again, Jarl?" jeered Teutoberg, scowling blackly at him.
"Where is this master of yours, this Winford?"

Jarl's eyes met Teutoberg's impassively. All too well he knew the innate
cruelty of this Earthman. Some explanation would have to be made to
satisfy him. Never a flicker of an eye-lash revealed what that
explanation would be, but Jarl glanced stoically at the empty stateroom.

"He did it," he said calmly.

"Did what, you clod?" Teutoberg flung at him savagely.

"Ended his life as he swore he would."

"Suicide? Impossible! Where is the body?"

"He destroyed it together with his life by drinking disintegrator
concentrate. He carried a capsule of it when we escaped from Mercury,
and I've heard him swear time and again that he would die before he
would permit himself to be taken back."

Teutoberg swallowed the story. There was nothing else to do, apparently.
He raved and cursed. Once he raised his pistol to Jarl's heart and
lowered it again.

"You'll take his place, Martian dog!" he snarled. "By proxy I shall
treat him as he deserves, and you shall be the proxy. Back to the hold
with you for the present!"

With that Teutoberg whirled about, strode up the stairs and vanished in
the control room.

Commander 6666-A and his men were dragged aft to the air-lock, leaving
the passage near Winford temporarily empty. He broke out the grating and
wormed his way out of the air tunnel, dropping on the floor hands first.
He sprang to his feet, and started grimly up the steps to the control
room. Inside that room was Teutoberg, a bigger man than himself, and
armed, yet Winford, barehanded, cautiously opened the door and stepped
inside.

* * * * *

Teutoberg was standing at one side of the room gazing in rapt attention
at the slaughter of the helpless marines. One by one he watched them
emerge from the air-lock bloated and white in their nakedness with their
convulsed limbs already growing rigid in the icy cold of space. Out in
the open space between the two ships they hung motionless a few minutes