could be built where there was no red clay under the soil to be turned up by an incautious hoe. It had stood here for generations. Perhaps for a thousand years.

It seemed to be deserted, but Fahnes knew better. The Honkies in the villages were not showing themselves, so that they might the more effectually pretend that he was not there. It was insult. It was stupidity. It denied the courage and the cunning and the cleverness of Fahnes, who had defied Honkie gods and Company regulations to go there and rob the god who roared hideously in the last hour before dawn.

He unslung the flame-rifle. He'd made his plans carefully, and more Honkies would not spoil them. White with tension and with unreasonable rage, he prepared to force the Honkies to play the part he had assigned them. The trick would be the swift and murderous use of destruction to clear the village of those who remained in it in hiding, and to force them to fury against him.

A brisk looting of the temple of the dew-god, facing him where he stood, would follow, and then a completely ruthless march back to the trading-post, using the flame-gun mercilessly to make his retreat secure, yet so sparingly that the maddened Honkies would yet have hopes of overwhelming him for his sacrilege and murder.

When the supply-ship dropped from the sky, the Honkies would be besieging the trading-post. His tale of a religious frenzy beginning with the murder of Boles--who was not murdered at all--would be convincing. Under regulations, there would be nothing for the supply-ship skipper to do but evacuate the trading-post, carrying Fahnes and the loot he'd have hidden, to the nearest civilized plant, where he would vanish utterly, with wealth incalculable.

And he'd demand that the skipper give the village a bath in take-off-jet flame as the supply-ship rose skyward. With the tale he'd tell, that would be a certainty. It would prove his rage, because normally only a man in frenzy demands revenge, and Boles had an extraordinary popularity among the employees of the Consolidated Trading Company.

He fired. Coruscating flame enveloped the nearest house. There was the roar of suddenly-expanded air and of burning. A second blast of ravening destruction. A third--a fourth!

He saw a few, furtive, fugitive movements. The Honkies in the village had fled. They were still fleeing. His scheme was working as it would continue to work, and as Boles would some day figure it out with a single 

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