confiscated tube ship, the Wanderer, complete with fittings. The cargo of the same consisting of miscellaneous trade goods. Saturday. Inquire at Collector's Office for details.

"Phew!" gasped Hank Karns. "That was quick work. And planned." He turned and made his way to the Collector's Office.

The man at the front desk gaped at him woodenly.

"S'already sold," he said indifferently, the third time Karns put his question.

"But it says Saturday...."

"Okay—it says Saturday. So what?"

"B-but this is only Tuesday...."

"We have a Saturday every week, dodo. Now trot along and annoy somebody else for a change. I have work to do."

Hank Karns blinked. Why, Saturday was the day the Wanderer docked. These Venusians were getting raw. They must have sold her that very day!

"Who is that old man? Throw him out!"

Karns turned slowly and viewed the new speaker. He was a big man, with piercing black eyes and a hawk nose, and heavily bearded—a strange sight for super-tropical Venus where men kept clean shaven for coolness. But the man turned abruptly away and entered an inner office, slamming the door behind him. Hank Karns' eyes followed him all the way—they were fixed on the back of the fellow's neck. There, oddly enough, just above the shoulder line, peeped a line of color demarcation. Above the line, which was made visible by the fact that its wearer had pulled open his collar for comfort, the skin was the normal pallor usually seen on Venus; below, it was a mottled chocolate color.

"Didja hear what the collector said?" snarled the clerk. "Scram!"

Without a word, Hank Karns turned and left the office. He passed through the thronged corridors almost in a daze. There was Cappy Wilkerson, gone to the Swamp, virtually condemned to death. There was his ship sold, even before the trial which was to condemn it. And everywhere there was high-handed insolence, seemingly inspired by this overbearing man with the duplex complexion. What did it mean? And the fact that he could not yet place those sharp eyes and that predatory nose, though somewhere, sometime, he had encountered them before, puzzled Hank Karns still more. Something 

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