planted it! The fatuous, decadent, pleasure-loving leader of the Arones was unwilling to believe that the Gorts could be any menace. The efforts of Peters and his fellow scientists, even now were looked upon with disfavor. Peters and his men were distrusted, even accused of having dreams of conquest of their own. Thousands of the Arones thought it, so that there was an undercurrent of strife in Arron, fostered, of course, by Tollgamo's spies.

"And now Tollgamo seems to be about ready for his attack," Allen was telling me. "Peters probably has no weapons of any importance with which to oppose him. And so Peters made an effort to get help from Earth. Tollgamo found it out, and sent this ship to follow the girl so as to keep her from giving the secret of spaceflight to Earth."

The barred metal door of our little cubby suddenly opened. A Gort man stood there. Allen and I stared. Like the other Gorts, he was encased in shining mailed garments. But he was crippled, bent and twisted, with one shoulder higher than the other and a lump on his bent back. On him, the metal garments were grotesque. He came sidling in, grinning at us with his ugly, puffed and bloated grey-skinned face.

"I am Borgg," he said. "You will have food and drink soon. You hungry?"

"I want to see the Peters girl," I retorted. "Take me to her."

He shook his head. "Garga will take care of her. She is safe."

His glowing, dark-eyed gaze roved us. Out in the corridor there was a man's voice—one of the other Gorts passing. And the weird, shambling hunchback suddenly burst into guttural laughter. "So the Earthmen are afraid of me? Afraid of Borgg, who wants only to amuse people?"

He suddenly backed away from us, hurling what seemed a stream of invective at us in the guttural syllables of his own language. Then he backed through our door, slammed it upon us and bolted it.

We stared at each other blankly. "Well I'll be damned," Allen muttered. "What could that mean?"

I can only sketch the weird events of that voyage to Venus. My first spaceflight. You who read this can anticipate taking one soon, of course. And you are naturally familiar with the glowing words of description the newscasters have used. With the mechanical details of Interplanetary traveling, the more scientific-minded among you must be thoroughly familiar. I think all that need have little place in my 

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