the outlaw's other hand as it raised, clutching an alloy bar. Gasdon had taken the key!

The half-breed swept a defense bar from a gladiator's stiff dead hand. Gasdon laughed fearless scorn, threw the girl from him, and met Moljar's rush with his own bar upraised. They crashed together with a dull clang, parted, struck again. They circled warily, feinting, parrying, thrusting....

Mahra's scream rang out. "The Mistmen! Coming into the arena!"

Moljar's eyes darted toward her. Beyond, far across the sands, were a number of grey vaporous spheres. Within their depths, dim shapes, indistinct, blurred, moved in a steady ferocious intent toward the three.

"Fight!" yelled Gasdon. He charged toward Moljar again. His face was twisted insanely. "We're doomed anyway. Defend yourself!" His broad yellow face glowed with obsession as he sprang. His alloy bar whirled in a singing arc, which was unwise. Moljar dropped beneath the level of the bar, punched savagely with the end of his own. Gasdon screamed hoarsely as the blunt end sank into his solar plexus. He staggered back, trying to lift the bar. Moljar swung downward, sank his bar halfway through the Martian outlaw's heavy skull.

Quickly Moljar retracted the yellow ring. He yelled at the girl. Then they were running together across the death-littered amphitheatre. Rays of force might have burned them down easily, but for some reason not then known to Moljar, the Mistmen did not fire.

They darted through an unguarded archway, up through level after level. They were still running easily when they reached the roof landing above the catacombs where the monsters of the games were kept. The long low hangar's panel slid open when the ring was applied to its invisible photo-electronic reaction mechanism. The gyro-scout's panel and instruments also were activated by the ring of Alhone.

Moljar hesitated, grinned at the girl. Her silver hair shone like dewed metal. "You are following me? A half-breed? A slave?"

"I'm not following anyone, not in the sense you mean. I'm with you, that's all. I'd have to fight alone, otherwise. That would hardly be intelligent of me, would it?"

"Hardly," he said. "Come on." The gyro-scout lifted automatically, straight up through increasingly thick cloud-layers, until it shot suddenly forward, straight like a bullet across Venus Port and above the Sea of Mort.

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