Hurriedly Glayne flashed his torch about, trying to find the mono-car which his party had used to get to Selzi-Narfid's quarters. The car itself was gone but he found the gleaming mono-rail and followed it at a rapid trot. Fortunately the passage was well-equipped with automatic air-locks, one of which had whipped in place when the air pressure dropped suddenly. When he came to the first of these, he found that the dilator was without power. He fumed at the wasted time as he burned around the lock with his torch and triggered the mechanism with his finger. After he closed it behind him, Glayne picked up his jogging pace down the mono-rail passage. He felt a kind of grim, ruthless hatred when he thought of Bro-Doral. He hoped wistfully that he would find the sneering sadist before Garstow's energy beams ripped the discoid to pieces. He wondered what had happened to Niala Chodred. During the battle he had consciously held his thoughts away from her and the dull ache of her memory. A chill loathing spread through him as he thought of the Vibra-Death. He knew of the agonies of that nerve torture; it produced not one slow death but thousands. More passionately than ever he longed to find the Bro. Suddenly Glayne felt the floor of the discoid tremble under his feet. At first he ignored it, but it grew persistently stronger and he realized that the fleet was again hurling its energy beams at the discoid--but this time they were penetrating because there was no shield to stop them. He quickened his pace, rounded a long curve, and found that he had reached his goal. He vaulted the high curbing and pounded down the tapestried corridor to the wide entrance stage. The dilator stud refused to operate, so Glayne burned into the lock to operate the stud. He discovered that the port itself was locked and a sudden unreasoning hope blazed up in him. With rapid movements he burned the lock out altogether and threw his weight against the door. With a wheeze it dilated and he staggered into the luxurious apartment, stumbling from the force of his own momentum. He was scrambling to his feet when something hit him. It was soft with rounded contours which he perceived even through the unsympathetic thickness of his spacesuit. And it had red hair and green eyes. It was Niala. "Glayne ... oh, Glayne," she murmured, clinging tightly to him. "But ... but you're not hurt," he stammered, his mind striving to adjust to the realization of a hope which it had long rejected. "I thought they had killed you," she sobbed happily. "But you got away." "Yes, he did," remarked a third voice, familiar and hated. "It was unfortunate." Glayne whirled. Gort Bro-Doral stood inside the entrance stage, a black Cardy gun in his hand. "Without you in the audience, Captain, I didn't see much point in amusing myself with the girl. But now that you have returned, Glayne--" The big Guardian crouched to spring at the Delban, gathering his legs under him.