They were spying on him to see what he would do, laughing because he could do nothing, their voices filling his head, asking who he was, what he was going to do now, mocking him. He would show them! Run to the laughing white mountains, cast them into an ocean, crush them beneath his feet! That would put them in their places! Do it now! Marcius pulled himself to his feet. He knew that he had been running and had fallen, striking his helmet upon something hard, and that he had been laughing, crying and cursing at the same time. The reverberating blow had shocked him into silence. And he was remembering the words of the doctor who had cared for him, back on Mars. The doctor had said, "You have a great mind, Sire, and a very strong will, but there are some flaws, as in all men. If you should know defeat, your only hope will be death. Living, your mind would refuse to give up, beating itself into insanity against a blank wall." Now, Marcius knew what the doctor had meant. There were still the voices in his mind repeating over and over, "Who are you?--Who are you?" almost as if they were mocking the beating of his heart. There was something strange about the voices, Marcius thought. It was as if there were some alien intelligence behind them. There were two of them, and they seemed to require an answer from him. It was with no great hope that he answered the voices by concentrating upon his name and present predicament. * * * * * The thoughts of Marcius Kemble did not go unheard. Unknown to the rest of the solar system, Pluto had its inhabitants. To Earth men, these would be very strange beings, not alone in appearance but in composition. Their heads were roughly triangular, widening upward from a pointed chin and resting on thin, yet strong, necks above equally strong and spindly man-like bodies. They were mainly composed of elements which became solid only at very low temperatures. Thus it was that one of these beings sat before a radio-like device and perspired in the extreme cold of the room. His long pointed ears were depressed by the weight of a shiny metal cap and his too-large eyes held a look of worried consternation. The reason for his consternation was the thoughts of the ex-dictator of Mars. The wearer of the cap shot a series of rapid sounds at the other occupant of the room. He said, in effect, "I have received thought emanations from the direction of the great plain, rather garbled. The being is probably a giant from some other world, for his thoughts are alien and he evidently considers it within his power to crush the mountains which house us!" The other made a negative gesture with a slender hand. "Don't you think it is more likely that it is a trick of the enemy to frighten us, Gor? They have tried such things before, you know."