pursuers nor of their bullets as he fled from the Marshall manor. Not as long as the precious little bundle in his arms held the dim spark that was heir to the Marshall millions. Widely opened blue eyes were peering up at him, but not with fear. Only with a strange wonder that bordered on mental stupor.

"Don't be frightened," said young Rufus as they lumbered into the port aperture of the space-flyer. "I'm not going to hurt you."

He laid her on a pendant space cushion and she did not struggle.

"I'm not frightened," she said in a leaden tone. "All you could do is kill me. And I am not afraid of death. Neither would you harm me bodily, since I am no longer attractive as other girls are."

Hand on the controls, Rufus faltered, looking back at the tumbled maze of glinty hair.

"Whoever told you that?" he demanded, feeling poignantly sorry for her for the first time. Up until the present instant, he had considered her impersonally, rather as a key or possible solution for his own troubles. It made him aware of the tremendous risks he was taking with her life. Yet it was too late to back out now.

Under his guidance, the space-flyer lurched up at the sky, hurled itself through the thinning blue stratosphere and smoked a fast trail for the outer depths of space.

Strange, or was it?—that up till now he had thought only of that final memory of his gaunt death-beckoned father, of the promise he had made looking into the stern exactness of fading eyes.

When young Rufus swore he would keep the Thallin Starways going, would preserve that proud tradition that went back to former times when the first gallant rocket-ships bellowed like fire-breathing monsters and hurtled fearlessly into the void, he had meant every word of it.

His feelings changed. Again the girl was only a pawn. Everything else had failed. He had seized upon her and the sickness that lay prey to her body as a means toward an end. He felt that there was a good chance of her being cured when exposed to the healing rays of the void. He was gambling not only her life, but his own as well. For if he failed in his mission the Space Police would hound him to an eventual ignoble end.

In the visor screens, earth was falling away swiftly. As he watched a scattering of dots appeared, drifted slowly across the face of the globe, into space. 

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