From a ragged cavern in the Martian's chest there came a brighter flood of crimson. It stained the fabric of his dark-textured, tight-fitting garments, dripped from his garments to the ground and formed a widening pool at his feet.

He swayed a little, but he did not totter and fall. He died standing up, with the animation fading slowly from his eyes. The eyes clouded over, became opaque. But still the Martian remained upright, a standing corpse which maintained its equilibrium by the sturdiness of its firmly planted legs and the sheer massiveness of its barrel-shaped torso and dangling arms.

The mannish woman sank to her knees, covered her eyes with her hands, and began to moan. The man with the rifle stood motionless, his lips white, smoke pouring from the barrel of the half-lowered weapon. The stout woman had ceased to scream. Her face looked gray and frozen and her fingers had gone to her throat. She was plucking at the flesh of her throat, as if the sudden tightening of her vocal cords was causing her unendurable torment.

The slain Martian's costly delay in killing the man with the rifle appeared to enrage his companions. With brutal callousness two of them moved forward, and hurled the lifeless body to the ground. Then, they took care not to repeat his mistake. They killed all three men, with such rapid bursts of weapon fire that they were lifted into the air, hurled backwards and were dead before their bodies struck the ground.

The slender woman whom Tragor coveted cried out in anguish and ran toward the crumpled form of the man with the rifle, her eyes shining with a near madness that went far beyond shock and made her waver as she ran. He was still clasping the rifle, his fingers snagged in the trigger frame. There were no visible wounds on his body, but blood stained his left temple and his eyebrows and hair had been singed. His face was ashen, the eyes blankly staring. She knew at once that he was dead and flung herself upon him, weeping, moaning, her body racked by uncontrollable sobs.

She did not hear the slow, heavy tread of a Martian drawing near and if she had heard she would not have cared. She had no desire to go on living, and had ceased to know the meaning of fear. Her life was over. At that moment she realized, as never before, that no one dies alone.

He had taken her with him and she had died too. Only the hollow shell of a living woman remained. She did not care what happened to that shell. There is no fate worse than death to a woman who has 

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