smiled crookedly; he had always had a special fondness for McGowan, and obeyed him implicitly in everything.

We began the climb. An hour later we stood panting but unbowed upon the surface, staring at stars most of us had not seen in years! We were eight men, determined, but armed only with the short metal hook we had used for digging out the rock. McGowan carried it. He gestured with it to the left, as he whispered:

"This way. We must be about a mile from the ravine where Marnick's located. Stay in sight of each other now, and watch your step—no noise!"

The terrain was rocky and rough; the horizon of the tiny planet seemed very near, and curved sharply down. The night was pitch black and boundless, with only the pinpoints of stars to guide us.

Hours later, it seemed, we glimpsed another pinpoint of light that was not a star. It was too low against the blackness for that; we knew it was a light from Marnick's abode, at the entrance of a rocky little canyon perhaps a quarter of a mile away. We proceeded with infinite caution.

Suddenly, I felt that awful agony through every nerve again, and I knew we had stumbled into more of Marnick's detector beams. This time we may have blundered far enough to set off an alarm, but I didn't especially care. I fell to the ground as the warning along my nerves persisted. For a minute I was almost violently ill. Luckily, the others stopped instantly. McGowan dragged me back and waited until I had recovered.

"Our human beam detector. Lucky we've got you with us, Reed!" But there was no humor in his voice, in fact I caught a note of pity. I think he already realized, just as I was slowly beginning to—

But I shall not think of that. McGowan spoke a few words to Elson that we could not hear. Elson nodded obediently. We moved away at a sharp angle to the right, but now I noticed Elson did not accompany us.

I was still dizzy and weak, but I clenched my teeth and determined to see this thing through to the finish. I guided us away from those beams. As near as I could determine, they rayed out in a sort of semi-circular barrier, invisible, of course. Carefully we skirted the edge of it, toward the far wall of the canyon that sheltered Marnick's house. How I stayed on my feet I cannot understand, for every step was an agony as the faintest out-reaches of those rays stabbed fiercely through me. The others, of course, felt nothing.

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