stick-men sensed something unusual in his
strained attitude. They stared in at him, while he remained tense,
listening.

Now Russ's voice came again. "They're going to take off my helmet and
throw in the suspended animation gas, Burl. Good-by. I can see them
still. Oh ... oh, I feel strange, I feel stiff, faint ... here ... I ...
go...."

His voice faded out, thin and weak. Then there was only silence.

Burl threw himself against the restraining transparent wall of his dome
prison and hammered on it with his fists. The dome would not give way.

He looked around desperately, determined to escape, wondering what
surprise the Plutonians were holding him for--suspecting he would be the
next victim. They would be coming for him soon, he knew.

He searched the enclosure for some way of leaving. He looked at the
stick-men and wondered if they knew. One of them, the one who seemed to
be the leader, gestured to him. His arm pointed to a spot in the floor.

Sure enough, there was a crack there, an outline like a small trap
cover. He worked at it with his fingers and, finding a dent, he pushed.
A lid came off. Below was a cleared space, a few inches deep, in which
were set the levers of a typical Plutonian control board.

Burl wondered if he were still carrying the charge that attuned him to
such controls. The shock he had received on Pluto could have blanked it
out.

He pushed at the levers with his gloved hands. They did not obey him.
Desperately, he removed the glove from one of his hands. It was bitter
cold in the little enclosure, but there was some atmosphere. The lever
almost froze to his fingers, but he turned it again.

This time it worked. The top of the dome that entrapped him suddenly
opened, and the sides slid back. Burl replaced his glove on his hand and
dashed outside to the freedom of the frigid surface of Triton.

Then he was among the Neptunian stick-men, and they were actually
patting him on the back, waving toward the building, hurrying him on.

They were prepared to die in one last desperate assault on the foe.
Could Burl do less?

Chapter 19. _The Museum of Galactic Life_

There were a number of structures laid out on the plain under the blue
glow of Neptune. Burl saw that only one of them was a true building in
the design he had come to know was that of an ancient Plutonian temple
except that it was far, far larger than any of the ruined shells he had
seen on Pluto.

The other struc