annot exist except as slaves, but they can be trained to
understand language and to do certain kinds of work. They are harmless
and mild, making excellent servants, otherwise they would have perished
ages ago. All menial work and most of the manual labor is done by the
slave race. Formerly criminals were sterilized and reduced to unwilling
slavery, but there have been no unwilling slaves in Kondal for hundreds
of karkamo."

"Why? Are there no criminals any more?"

"No. With the invention of the thought recorder an absolutely fair trial
was assured and the guilty were all convicted. They could not reproduce
themselves, and as a natural result crime died out."

"That is," he added hastily, "what we regard as crime. Duelling, for
instance, is a crime upon Earth; here it is a regular custom. In Kondal
duels are rather rare and are held only when honor is involved, but here
in Mardonale they are an every-day affair, as you saw when you landed."

"What makes the difference?" asked Dorothy curiously.

"As you know, with us every man is a soldier. In Kondal we train our
youth in courage, valor, and high honor--in Mardonale they train them in
savage blood-thirstiness alone. Each nation fixed its policy in bygone
ages to produce the type of soldier it thought most efficient."

"I notice that everyone here wears those heavy collars," said Margaret.
"What are they for?"

"They are identification marks. When a child is nearly grown, a collar
bearing his name and the device of his house is cast about his neck.
This collar is made of 'arenak,' a synthetic metal which, once formed,
cannot be altered by any usual means. It cannot be scratched, cut, bent,
broken, or worked in any way except at such a high temperature that
death would result, if such heat were applied to the collar. Once the
arenak collar is cast about a person's neck he is identified for life,
and any adult Osnomian not wearing a collar is put to death."

"That must be an interesting metal," remarked Crane. "Is your belt a
similar mark?"

"This belt is an idea of my own," and Dunark smiled broadly. "It looks
like opaque arenak, but isn't. It is merely a pouch in which I carry
anything I am particularly interested in. Even Nalboon thought it was
arenak, so he didn't trouble to try to open it. If he had opened it and
taken my tools and instruments, I couldn't have built the educator."

"Is that transparent armor arenak?"

"Yes, the only difference being that no