He came close to Shane. A webbed hand twitched the Earthman's head. The injector poised close to the sun-tanned throat. Shane went completely limp. Dead weight, he sagged loose in the guards' hands. They swayed under the drag of him; shifted, trying to regain their balance. Shane writhed in a savage, spasmodic effort to break free. He kicked hard at Reggar. But the guards' hold held. Reggar twisted out of the way of the kick. He jerked Shane's head around by the hair. "It ends here, _chitza_!" Face contorted in ghoulish triumph, he drove the injector's plunger home. The _theol_ sprayed into Shane's throat.... CHAPTER VI They were singing in the dungeons--a wild _Chonya_ song that had echoed down through the reckless years since that fateful day when the first great raider ship blasted off from the asteroids across the void: _"Oh, they've hunted us for ages, Through the Belt and to the stars; They have sought advice of sages, And they've set up puppet gars. But there's Chonya blood within us, And when Chonyas take their stand, There'll be blood upon the hatches And a blight upon the land!"_ "My whole crew?" Shane asked tonelessly. One of the Martian _falas_ of the escort nodded. "Then why bother with me? They can tell you as much about the ship as I." The _fala_ shrugged. But a _Pervod_ snarled: "The fools will do nothing without your orders--not even tell us which are the technicians. We broke the captain's back, but still he refused to explain the mechanism." Shane's blue eyes grew cold as the pits of Neptune. "He's dead, then?" "Yes, and so will the rest of them be, unless you tell them to obey." "I'll give them their orders," Shane answered curtly. The muscles were standing out along his jaws. They moved on, into the dungeon's outer room, where crowding _Chonyas_ shouted their hate and shook the bars. A crewman with a bloody bandage about his head leaped onto a bench and, pointing, cried out, "_Gar Shane_!" The singing died away. "Your first trick is your last!" the guard in charge snarled in Shane's ear. Roughly, he shoved the Earthman forward. Shane strode through the settling silence. Wordless, he looked about him--at the glittering, unbreachable, green telonium walls; at the lean, tough horde of _Chonya_ crewmen, pressing hot-eyed and intense against the bars; at the guards who flanked and backed him, light-guns out and lance-prods ready. * * * * * He swung back till again he faced the _Chonyas_; took a step or two with a reckless swagger. His back was stiff, his head unbowed. In a hard flat voice he said: "These slavers who hold us here want full technical data on the Abaquist meteor repellers on our ship. Already, they have broken your captain's back because he would not give it to them." The silence echoed.