MIND STEALERS OF PLUTO

By JOSEPH FARRELL

Ron Barnard had stuck his nose into one news story too many. It had started with a lovely girl, a wily Chinese and a drug ring that circled the System. Now it was ending for him in a rogue spaceship—his epitaph a rocket's red stream across the starways.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Ron Barnard leaned unhappily on Quong Kee's bar and looked over the worst dive on Mars. This hell hole of Quong Kee's was no fit place even for a newspaperman looking for a story on the dope ring that was haunting the outer planets. The habitues were cut-throats, fugitives from Earth and the space police. To say nothing of the neoin fiends.

The two unshaven men hunched at a corner table, for instance. He eyed them in contempt. They were far gone in their addiction to the drug, and he would put no crime past them. They probably would murder their grandmothers for a gram of neoin.

The two persons in question straightened as if a gun had been fired. They faced the bar, and their questing eyes found Barnard. One of them, teeth bared and hands bent into claws, started to move toward the reporter.

"What did you think?" the man demanded.

Barnard dropped a coin on the bar and tried to walk carelessly to the door. He wanted no fights with a neoin-filled madman. Silently he cursed himself for forgetting the extra sensory powers imparted by the drug. But the men had seemed too far gone to use their ESP.

The man charged across the room. Barnard saw that escape was out and resigned himself to a fight. He waited for the wild lunge, sidestepped and shot in a right that sent the addict reeling back. A few customers watched with mild interest. But this was routine at Quong Kee's—nobody would interfere.

Sullenly, the man glared at him, as if gathering courage for another charge. Barnard knew that actually the irresponsible creature was working himself up to a murderous pitch. Now he felt the waves of fury beating at his mind.

He waited, tense and ready. From the corner of his vision he saw the drapes that cut off the back room come apart, and a figure hurrying out. A slender 

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