back with his gun. "He's all right," he said.

Charley, our hero, was being carried in on the powerful shoulders of a Martian serf. The Martian, in an ill-fitting R.A. uniform, was one of the semi-slave groups, strong, brutish, and low on the Martian scale of evolution. He put Charley down very gently at Vechi's command.

I envied Charley his blissful oblivion but not the collision he must have sustained with his ham-handed friend. I tried to spot the emblem on the Martian's wrist band; I could have learned which Martian house he belonged to. But no luck. I don't think I was even greatly surprised to discover we had Martians on board.

"All right, Vechi," I said. "What's your game?" The explanations were a little overdue.

What were Martians doing in the control room, Martians who obviously belonged to some powerful family? Why was Vechi hijacking an R.A. ship?

"This will become obvious shortly," Vechi said quietly. "I need the Starfish because I am about to make a long journey, a journey which no authority on Mars will permit in the orthodox fashion." He looked tired but oddly relaxed and deeply happy; it was a tantalizing combination.

"You can't get away with it," I said. And I didn't know what he was trying to get away with.

"I think it possible." Vechi looked at Raeburn. Then he looked back at me. I was staring at the Martian. Standing by the door, with folded arms, oblique black eyes and inscrutable features he made the scene more than unreal.

Vechi waited for me to return his glance. He shrugged at Raeburn. "This is the human garbage you can try, and sentence, and imprison. His crime is greed. He wants money. He will sell anything for money. He is a contact man for the Andean Research Society on Earth. And they are curious about diranium. They pay well. When Raeburn is finished they will send someone else, and someone else. Their persistence is as great as their greed. They have no morality. Eventually, they will succeed, I have no doubt."

"You were in it with me!" Raeburn cried. "It was your plan to go to Ul!"

Vechi paid him no attention. "My crime is something else again," he said softly. "If it is a crime."

Vechi, clinging to the hand-grip, was a strangely intense figure in the compartment. I felt that he directed no ill will towards me. That he was even appealing to 

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