one whole side, the familiar Earth hung motionless. It was mottled with clouds, beneath which the configurations of the oceans and continents were plainly visible.

I stared, awed, wordless; and then, still weak and dizzy with the cold sweat of the drug chilling me, I was glad enough to sit down on the couch, with Jim beside me.

"Who's got us?" I asked presently.

"A fellow named Curtmann and his band. A dozen or more of them here on board. I've talked with one of them—they're all Earthmen—this ship was built on Earth. Would you believe it? A damned scientist from mid-Europe built it secretly. He never told the world about it, but gathered a bunch of crooks and beat it off."

"Not so fast," I murmured. "Don't get incoherent."

I tried to sort it out as he breathlessly told me what he had learned. Some eight or ten years ago, among the captive people of mid-Europe under police domination of the Anglo-American Federation, a fellow named Karl Curtmann had built this hundred foot cylindrical space-flyer. The same old urge for world conquest. But this fellow Curtmann had known that on Earth he had no chance. This was not 1915, nor 1939. And so he had gathered others like himself; all English-speaking, since their racial language had been banned by the Federation before they were born, and with his ship and his men, they had adventured into Space.

"Seems they landed on Venus," Jim was saying. "It was a fertile field for a world-conqueror, by what I hear! Peaceful, simple people, with these Earth cutthroats jumping on them. They used a bunch of our Shadow Squad weapons, which was enough and plenty."

Once established there as a conqueror, Curtmann had gone back to Earth on several trips, for supplies and more weapons and men.

"I guess there are several hundred of 'em on Venus now," Jim went on. "Built themselves a little city, and made slaves out of the Venus-people. You can imagine what this style Earthman would do when he's a conqueror with nothing to challenge him! And the Venus-people are on the down-grade. Dying out, except for the Midges."

"Midges?"

"They're the little people of Venus. They serve. They believe that all Earth men are gods, or something." Jim shrugged. "Don't ask me. We'll find out soon enough."

The Midge! I remembered that little bronze man-figure 

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