stood up. Was her face flushed with indignation, fright, or—? He got to his own feet. The giant had released the ship.

"We are chastened," murmured Jerry, feeling a bruised shin.

"And now what?" asked Joe Silver. "Ordinary weapons are as much use to us as spitballs." He sat down. "Let's figure out what else to try. Somewhere there's an answer."

They all sat down, Pink said, "Remember Wolf 864?"

"Sure," said Daley, who had been on that expedition with Pinkham when they were young cubs out of jetschool. "Friendly natives, kind of vegetable-animal life, and we murdered half of them unintentionally. We had to get out and never go back."

"How?" asked Circe. "How did you kill them?"

"Germs. The common ordinary non-toxic germs we carry in our systems all the time. It was a massacre—and of a queer, sweet kind of beast. They had no tolerance for our microbes."

"I volunteer to find the alien and breathe in his face," said Jerry. "Somebody hand me an onion," he added.

The conversation went on. It grew aimless to Pink, a bunch of boys whistling by a graveyard, eight prisoners speculating on their escape when they had no real knowledge of their jailer. He fiddled with the intercom, saw that the crew had gathered by the mutiny gates and were waiting tensely, puny weapons in their hands. He spoke a few words of encouragement to them. 57 men—whom he hated to see die. Somehow he had to save them.

It was about half an hour afterwards that he first discovered he was breathing too shallowly.

CHAPTER XI

"What is it?" asked Circe. Her lovely face was a trifle pallid. "I feel odd—and you all look pale."

Then it struck Pink. None of the others, even Daley, had recognized what was happening. He did not dare waste a second in telling them. He tore the door open and leaped into the corridor.

Deliberately he tried to draw as much oxygen into his lungs as he could. It was growing rarer every instant; but never mind trying to conserve it—the life of everyone aboard depended on his reaching the atmospheria. For the air in the spaceship was rapidly degenerating, becoming unbreathable as what remained of the good stuff was inhaled and thrown off as useless gases....

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