"Kiss me, warrior." A jeweled veil-mask. What did it hide? _Kill the man-things!_ But Kyla.... No--! Not even for power could he give up Kyla! Not send her to her death, to the coleoptera--! * * * * * Something snapped inside Haral. The world went mad. His brain was on fire, on fire, twisting and turning, turning and burning, pulled through his skull by sensuous fingers. He couldn't think. His body was a bursting entity of anguish. _Kill the man-things!_ Jewels glinting in a filmy mask. Spasmodically, he jerked away. Convulsive, clutching, without volition, his hands clawed up into Xaymar's face and snatched away the veil. The fire in his brain went out. The torment ended. Staggering, he saw the world without the haze. Now Xaymar's hands were before her face; her fingers masking, shielding. Savagely, he caught her wrists and jerked them down ... stared into her eyes. He almost screamed aloud. Because her eyes were not humanoid eyes. Faceted, fixed, protuberant, glassy, they were _insectile_! The eyes of a beetle, a coleopteron! A phrase she'd used came back: "... _while my children feast_...." Through the horror and shock that froze him, he heard Sark shouting: "Seize him! Seize him--!" Hands clutched his arms. They jerked him back and pinned him down. Xaymar said; "So at last you know ..." and now her voice crawled with hate and fury. Haral did not answer. She raved at him: "Yes! I am of the coleoptera--a mutant, and a hybrid! Now you know how I gave them the power of thought! Those that think are my own children, my descendants! And now you know, too, why I took a thousand human lovers, and slew each one before the dawn. For I have human passion hot within me, but no man could forbear to look beneath my veil, and with my brain close-tuned to theirs, I felt the horror well up in them--the same disgust and loathing that even you cannot conceal. So I killed them, that they might never tell my secret--" She broke off. Her hands clenched till blood spurted where the nails gouged through the palms. Her voice rose--hysterical, vindictive. "Throw him alive into the arena! Yes, let my children feast upon him--!" * * * * * The crewmen jerked Haral to his feet again. The coleoptera surged forward. He glimpsed slim Kyla, with horror written on her lovely face.... Sark, doubled over, gloating and laughing ... the seething fury that dwelt in Xaymar. But now his brain was clear again, the shadow of the nameless evil gone. Fire surged in his veins, and wild, reckless daring. The _dau_ and the _Pervod_ dragged him towards the beetles. He cried, "I'll meet my fate standing, you _chitzas_!" and kicked with all his might for the _Pervod's_ fragile reptilian ankle. He heard the bones snap over all the tumult. The _Pervod's_ shriek rang like the scream of a sky-shell. He snatched for its ray-gun.