enemies. There was naught to fear. 

 Without haste the nearest air patrol swung sluggishly about and approached the stranger. At easy speaking distance the officer upon her deck hailed the incoming craft. 

 The cheery “Kaor!” and the plausible explanation that the owner had come from distant parts for a few days of pleasure in gay Helium sufficed. The air-patrol boat sheered off, passing again upon its way. The stranger continued toward a public landing stage, where she dropped into the ways and came to rest. 

 At about the same time a warrior entered her cabin. 

 “It is done, Vas Kor,” he said, handing a small metal key to the tall noble who had just risen from his sleeping silks and furs. 

 “Good!” exclaimed the latter. “You must have worked upon it all during the night, Larok.” 

 The warrior nodded. 

 “Now fetch me the Heliumetic metal you wrought some days since,” commanded Vas Kor. 

 This done, the warrior assisted his master to replace the handsome jewelled metal of his harness with the plainer ornaments of an ordinary fighting man of Helium, and with the insignia of the same house that appeared upon the bow of the flier. 

 Vas Kor breakfasted on board. Then he emerged upon the aerial dock, entered an elevator, and was borne quickly to the street below, where he was soon engulfed by the early morning throng of workers hastening to their daily duties. 

 Among them his warrior trappings were no more remarkable than is a pair of trousers upon Broadway. All Martian men are warriors, save those physically unable to bear arms. The tradesman and his clerk clank with their martial trappings as they pursue their vocations. The schoolboy, coming into the world, as he does, almost adult from the snowy shell that has encompassed his development for five long years, knows so little of life without a sword at his hip that he would feel the same discomfiture at going abroad unarmed that an Earth boy would experience in walking the streets knicker-bockerless. 

 Vas Kor’s destination lay in Greater Helium, which lies some seventy-five miles across the level plain from Lesser Helium. He had landed at the latter city because the 

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