nly could offer
little threat to the company, yet they ringed him in, weapons ready,
watching his every move. The scout licked cracked lips. There was one
thing they could not control, could not prevent him from doing.
Somewhere, not too far away, was help ...

Not from the merpeople, but he was sure that he had been in contact
with another friendly mind. Since the hour of his awakening on board
the globe ship, when he had half-consciously sent out an appeal for
aid over the band which united him with Sssuri's race, and had touched
that other consciousness--not the cold alien stream about him--he had
been sure that somewhere within the enemy throng there was a potential
savior. Was it among those who manned the strange flyer, those the
merpeople had spied upon but whom he had not yet seen?

Dalgard had striven since that moment of contact to keep in touch with
the nebulous other mind, to project his need for help. But he had been
unable to enter in freely as he could with his own kind, or with
Sssuri and the sea people. Now, even as he stood in the heart of the
enemy territory completely at the mercy of the aliens, he felt, more
strongly than ever before, that another, whose mind he could not enter
and yet who was in some queer way sensitive to his appeal, was close
at hand. He searched the painted faces before him trying to probe
behind each locked mask, but he was certain that the one he sought was
not there. Only--he must be! The contact was so strong--Dalgard's
startled eyes went to the wall behind the dais, tried vainly to trace
what could only be felt. He would be willing to give a knife oath that
the stranger was within seeing, listening distance at this minute!

While he was so engrossed in his own problem, the guard had moved. The
hooped bar which locked his wrists was loosened, and his arms, each
tight in the grip of one of the warriors were brought out before him.
The officer on the dais tossed a metal ring to one of the guards.

Roughly the warrior holding Dalgard's left arm forced the band over
his hand and jerked it up his forearm as far as it would go. As it
winked in the light the scout was reminded of a similar bracelet he
had seen--where? On the front leg of the snake-devil he had shot!

The officer produced a second ring, slipping it smoothly over his own
arm, adjusting it to touch bare skin and not the wrappings which
served him as a sleeve. Dalgard thought he understood. A device to
facilitate