our suits."

Neither officer moved, but both stared back at the speaker,
unflinchingly.

"I am not accustomed to repeating instructions," the man at the desk
continued; voice still low and level, but instinct with deadly menace.
"You may choose between removing those suits and dying in them, here and
now."

Costigan moved over to Clio and slowly took off her armor. Then, after a
flashing exchange of glances and a muttered word, the two officers threw
off their suits simultaneously and fired at the same instant; Bradley
with his Lewiston, Costigan with a heavy automatic pistol whose bullets
were explosive shells of tremendous power. But the man in gray,
surrounded by an impenetrable wall of force, only smiled at the
fusillade, tolerantly and maddeningly. Costigan leaped fiercely, only to
be hurled backward as he struck that unyielding, invisible wall. A
vicious beam snapped him back into place, the weapons were snatched
away, and all three captives were held to their former positions.

"I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility," the gray man said,
his hard voice becoming harder, "but I will permit no more foolishness.
Now I will introduce myself. I am known as Roger. You probably have
heard nothing of me: very few Tellurians have, or ever will. Whether or
not you two live depends solely upon yourselves. Being something of a
student of men, I fear that you will both die shortly. Able and
resourceful as you have just shown yourselves to be, you could be
valuable to me, but you probably will not--in which case you shall, of
course, cease to exist. That, however, in its proper time--you shall be
of some slight service to me in the process of being eliminated. In your
case, Miss Marsden, I find myself undecided between two courses of
action; each highly desirable, but unfortunately mutually exclusive.
Your father will be glad to ransom you at an exceedingly high figure,
but in spite of that fact I may decide to use you in a research upon
sex."

"Yes?" Clio rose magnificently to the occasion. Fear forgotten, her
courageous spirit flashed from her clear young eyes and emanated from
her taut young body, erect in defiance. "You may think that you can do
anything with me that you please, but you can't!"

"Peculiar--highly perplexing--why should that one stimulus, in the case
of young females, produce such an entirely disproportionate reaction?"
Roger's eyes bored into Clio's; the girl shivered and looked away. "But