"Is it all right, darling?" Sarah was looking at him brightly, her fingers twined under her chin with the left pinkie extended, her head cocked to one side. It was all so cute that it made Joe sick. He decided that if the showdown were put off much longer he'd never be able to stand the sight of her again. "You haven't called me 'darling' since our days of stardust and chivalry," he said. "Call me Joe." "What?" "I said--call--me--Joe." Sarah pushed her plate away. Her brown eyes were muddy. "I wasn't hungry anyway," she said coldly. Big Kent and Ray came through the door that led into the living room. Kent leaned against the wall and folded his massive arms. He grinned mockingly at Joe. "We never give up," he said. Ray stared nervously and wet his lips. Joe shoved back his chair inch by inch. "_Uarnl's_ dead," he said. "He blundered things in my office and got scared and tried to get off-world in a passenger. The Patrol blasted him." Sarah rose calmly and looked at Ray and Kent. Their faces were stony. She said: "_Lof--Dir_--I think the four of us together can break down his resistance to Occupancy." Her eyes traveled to an empty corner of the kitchen. "Are you ready, _Uarnl_?" She faced Joe again, a sly smile on her lips. "_Uarnl_ wasn't killed, Yoe--atomics don't kill us. The passenyer was." Joe wasn't surprised when she floated away from the chair and toward him, her slippers hardly seeming to touch the floor. He'd been expecting to be attacked. But what almost broke him into little pieces was her third eye--the one that blinked open in the middle of her forehead, brushing aside a brittle shell of skin and glaring at him with its wide, unhuman hunger. Then, for one terrible second, his brain felt packed in ice; the room was grotesque, filled with alien contrivances. The only sensible thing in it was _Ih's_ warm, familiar third eye. With all his melting strength, Joe thought, "_I destroyed the bodies!_" and the whole scene dangled unmoving before him, the weird, distant setting for the climax of a play, as he heard his own voice in a wrenching groan: "Our bodies--destroyed!" Appalling misery and hatred for _himself_ rocked Joe's brain. Then _Uarnl_ recoiled, as the _Aarnians'_ rapport was broken. Joe cried chokingly, "Lieutenant--Lieutenant Smith!" The canal door burst open and Lieutenant Smith of Mars Detain, who had been hugging the narrow metal landing ledge, came in like the proverbial tornado. What he'd heard had more than convinced him. The deadly little sphere in his hands started to make sharp spitting sounds. Sarah and Kent and Ray and the invisible _Uarnl_ screamed. All together, in a dissonance of agony and fear and death. [Illustration: They screamed, in a dissonance of agony and fear and death....] * * * * * Then, three of them stood loosely, in puzzled silence. Big Kent brushed a hand across his eyes. "Ray," he muttered, "what in hell were you yelling about?"