thinking aloud rather than answering Carlin. He wondered again about that queer feeling of strain. It had sounded almost as though Floring were warning her.

CHAPTER V

Desperate Play

The truck wheezed and groaned up the dark old road to the ridge. In the velvet black skies, the stars were chains of glittering light. Vega, Arcturus, Altair—they looked far away.

The house was dark when Marn stopped the truck behind it, though there were still lights out in the workshop. There was a solemn, buzzing hush about the starlit summer night.

"I have to take these things back to Jonny," said the girl.

"Marn, what are your brothers really planning?" Carlin asked her. "Does Floring know?"

She twisted uncomfortably. "Jonny told you all about their plans himself, didn't he?"

She was such a poor liar, she was so oddly appealing a figure in the starlight as she looked up at him with troubled white face, that sudden impulse made Carlin bend and kiss her.

Her small body was firm and warm in his hands and there was a breathlessness about her cool lips. But she did not move.

He looked down at her. "You don't mind, do you?" he asked.

"No, I don't mind," Marn said, her voice toneless, "It's all right for a star-world visitor to have a little flirtation with an Earth girl before he goes away, isn't it?"

"But it isn't that!" Carlin started to protest, and then stopped.

After all, what was it but that? What could it be but that?

"It's all right, but please don't again," Marn said quietly. "Good night, Laird."

He went into the house feeling depressed and thoughtful. He wished now that he hadn't had that impulse. Marn wasn't the sophisticated sort.

Lying in his bed and looking out the window at the distant spaceport beacons down in the valley, Carlin heard her come in and retire. Apparently Jonny and Harb were still working.

What were they working at really? Why had Floring been so grave in his veiled warning?

"Oh, the devil, 

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