Across the fallen body, Kortha looked at the white-faced officers. One of them extended his hands, palms down, saying, "Search us, Kortha. We came in peace." Kortha grinned again and waved a brown hand. "My fight was with Guantra. I thought he was my friend. Perhaps one of you can tell me about--the Blue Grotto?" They were all of them men from Guantra's flagship. Eagerly their mouths spilled words, reciting the tale Ilse already had told him. Kortha stared down at Guantra, grim-faced, silent. He sighed once when they were finished, and looked at Ilse. "And I never knew," he said to her softly. He spoke to the officers, "It was true, then. Guantra is and has been my enemy, and the enemy of all Mars. I am glad to know that." And he rubbed his right fist thoughtfully. "Can you find it in your heart to forgive a fool?" he asked of Ilse. There were tears in her eyes. She stumbled forward, was caught and crushed tight against him. His lips drank from hers, thirstily. The officers moved their feet, embarrassed. Kortha looked at them across Ilse's platinum hair, and laughed. "You'll forgive me a moment's humanity," he said. "There are no terms to give you. I am returning to the council. From here on out, Mars will take her place beside Earth and Venus. _This_ time they won't back out of their agreements." * * * * * The officers grinned at each other, wanting to yell their delight. They had known Kortha in the old days. One of them stepped ahead, hesitantly. "We--ah--we are very curious, Kortha. The way in which you beat us, that is. There were no guns in Ruuzol. There was no way to beat us. You could not defeat us. Yet you did. When the explosions began, Guantra went a little mad. He called you 'brood of Zut.' Frankly, a lot of us thought there was something supernatural about it, too. As a matter of fact I still do, and so do the rest of us." Kortha grinned at them, saying, "As a matter of fact, you have the same weapon I used aboard the flagship. Aboard every ship in the fleet, for that matter." They looked at him, and their eyes bulged. Kortha walked hand in hand with Ilse toward a cabinet inset in the tower wall. The officers came to stand around him in a semi-circle, watching him bring forth a small box fitted with a row of electronic tubes and cables fitted to two plates. "It looks like a radio set," said one of the officers. "It is," replied Kortha. "Except that it sends a stream of high frequency waves back and forth between those plates, instead of a voice into space. It internally induces heat into an object placed between the plates." Kortha took an iron bar and set it on the lower plate. He turned switches, looking down. Almost instantly the bar glowed faintly red, then waxed brighter and brighter. From brilliant crimson, it turned white with heat. Kortha flipped the current off. "The electronic tubes shoot a flow of high frequency waves between the plates."