ceased to live.

At first, when she felt herself being seized and lifted up, she struggled only to remain where she was—close to the man whose life she had shared and would go on sharing forever, despite death and change and Time's relentless tyranny in a universe which spared no one.

She was not even aware of the Martian's fleshly strength, the savage cruelty of his embrace, the way he was drawing her to him mercilessly, encircling her shoulders and refusing to relax his grip on her arms until his flat, hard chest bruised her numbed breasts.

At first the Martian was no more than a hindrance, an obstacle, a disembodied force that was keeping her from her dead lover. It was as if a magnetic web had enmeshed her limbs and was lifting her from the slain man's side, forcing her to abandon him.

It wasn't until the Martian had swung about and started back toward the ship, his arms tight about her, that she started to struggle. Even then her struggles were blindly instinctive, her flesh rebelling while her mind remained remote and grief-shattered.

She was not the only captive. Both of the stout women were struggling furiously in the arms of warrior-caste Martians, their faces flushed and despairing, their bodies arched backwards, as if to remain pressed cruelly to the boardlike chests of captors so brutish and alien, their screams silenced by force, was a horror and a degradation which no woman could sanely endure.

The gaunt, large-boned, mannish-looking woman was not being carried to the ship. She was being propelled forward by nudgings from the weapon of a Martian who wore upon his masklike face an unmistakable look of distaste.

There was a cold anger in her eyes and she walked with dignity despite the proddings, her composure completely restored now, her lips set in tight lines.

Tragor, staring through the view-glass, had missed nothing of the deadly, ten-minute struggle. He was pleased and almost beside himself with eagerness to take the captive whose beauty had so maddeningly aroused him from the arms of the warrior-caste brute and carry her to his own sleeping compartment.

The warriors had done well, but he had no intention of congratulating them. Discipline forbade it. A wave of revulsion swept over him again when he thought of how crude the warriors were in their lovemaking. They had no delicacy of perception, no 

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