husband if she got tired of Green or angry at him and accused him
publicly of amorous advances. This was enough to make Green jittery,
but he had more than the Duke to consider. There was Alzo.

Alzo was the Duchess's watchdog, a mastiff-like monster with shaggy
red-gold hair. The dog hated Green with a vindictiveness that Green
could only account for by supposing that the animal knew, perhaps from
his body-odor, that he was not a native of this planet. Alzo rumbled
a warning deep in his chest every time Green bent over the Duchess or
made a too-sudden movement. Occasionally he rose to his four feet and
nuzzled the man's leg. When that happened Green could not keep from
breaking out into a sweat, for the dog had twice bitten him, playfully,
so to speak, and severely lacerated his calf. As if that weren't bad
enough, Green had to worry that the natives might notice that his scars
healed abnormally fast, almost overnight. He'd been forced to wear
bandages on his legs long after the new skin had come in.

Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green's quivering
hide in the hope of putting the fear of the devil in him. At that
moment the Earthman resolved that, come the headsman's ax, rack, wheel,
or other hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound. It was just
after he made that vow that the Duchess caused him to forget altogether
the beast.

"Dear," said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his
conversation with a merchant-captain, "what is this I hear about two
men who have fallen from the sky in a great ship of iron?"

Green quivered, and he held his breath as he waited for the Duke's
reply.

The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick
bristly salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned.

"Men? Demons, rather! Can men fly in an iron ship through the air?
These two claimed to have come from the stars, and you know what that
means. Remember Oixrotl's prophecy: _A demon will come, claiming
to be an angel_. No doubt about these two! Just to show you their
subtlety, they claim to be neither demon nor angels, but men! Now,
there's devilish clever thinking. Confusing to anybody but the most

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