. Her tender mood was over in a flash and she
crouched there, terrible jealous eyes fixed on the Rulan maiden. She
extended a white arm with jeweled fingers, pointing. Blaine swung
quickly, brushing the arm aside just as that intangible something
flashed from her hand. The energy of the black disks! It had missed
Ulana by inches, but crashed home--on something!

* * * * *

A scream of terror rang out in the chamber, and there on the floor a
dozen paces from the dais the thing that had been Ianito wriggled under
the heap of whirring black things that suddenly covered the invisible
form. He wriggled and then lay still as the angry buzzing of the black
destroyers rose in triumphant, discordant song.

"Ianito!" the Zara exclaimed, thunderstruck. "He was here?"

"He was," Blaine assured her in an awed voice, "invisible, oh Zara, in
a cloak contrived by Dantor, the Rulan scientist." Then blind rage
overcame him. She had tried to kill Ulana; before his eyes! "You
she-devil!" he roared. "I've half a mind to choke the vile life from
your tainted body. Damn you! May the heat devils of Mercury burn and
sear and shrivel you in everlasting torment."

She cowered as if he had struck her, and, unaccountably, he was
ashamed. Cursing her like a schoolboy and using the language of the
lower class Venerians!

"Please, Carson, please," she moaned; "do it. Choke me if you will and
release me from my torment. I am yours to do with as you please."
Throwing back her proud head, she bared her throat.

Blaine took a step forward, his knees weak beneath him.

"Carson!" It was Ulana, her hand soft on his arm.

He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. This was madness! But was
ever a woman so deserving of death? Incomprehensible half-animal
creature, she sat there rocking to and fro, waiting.

"No!" he said. "No! Only let us go in peace, Clyone. Your sins be on
your own head. Your realization of them is punishment enough."

"Wait!" Controlling herself now, she rose once more, and her face was
transfigured. Almost it seemed that she was happy. "Wait!" she
repeated. "You are free to go when I have finished, but first Clyone
wishes to bid you farewell."

* * * * *

They faced her in silent wonderment.

"Ianito is gone," she continued, "and the Llotta are helpless without
him, unless I take over their leadership in fact. He was my master, I
admit. Bu