brought his wife and child from Earth. He struck a rich iridium vein and worked it slowly, alone. Then certain Earth corporations stepped in, as you know. They wanted Marnick to sell but he would not. He defied them to the end, which was foolish. Well, one day Marnick came back to his mine to find his wife dead, rayed mercilessly by a heat-gun, and his young son missing, probably lost in the Martian wastes."

"You don't mean," I gasped, "that the Earth corporations would—"

"Would do a thing like that? They would hire it done. That's the way they worked in the early days, they always got what they wanted, in one way or another. Well, Marnick must have sworn a terrible vengeance then. He fought them and plagued them, for years he pirated the spaceways until the Tri-Planet Patrol was formed and became too strong for him."

I pondered this story. "So now," I mused, "he's come to this. As overseer of this penal planet, he must be—"

"He is assuredly insane," McGowan finished for me. "But he is still vengeful. He was never certain whether they were Martians or Earthmen who killed his loved ones—those men hired by the Earth corporation. But ever since, I believe, Marnick has had a brooding hate for both races, especially the criminal element. That's why he's devised his tortures here. That's why he laughs as he indulges in his wholesale revenge. A sort of revenge by proxy, as it were."

I was aghast as I glanced at McGowan, wondering just how close to the truth about Marnick he had come. McGowan's eyes were steel hard again with hate as he went on:

"And that's why, Reed, we must put an end to Marnick's mad reign here. He was done a terrible injustice in the past, yes; but he's had his revenge many times over, on the unfortunate men who have passed through his hands. That's why I hate him, and that's why I shall have my own revenge, in my own way."

McGowan's face was not a thing I liked to look upon, in that moment.

Then came the day when I felt the first detector beam. I had been wondering and doubting, but when it came it was unmistakable; a single sharp pain through every fiber of my body, like the exposed nerve of a tooth when it's unexpectedly touched; and then a strong, steady tingling utterly different from that of the radite ore.

I was with Blakely at the time. He stopped his work instantly. "We'd better go down and get McGowan," he 

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