Jonathan looked at her red mouth and grinned, "I'll show you a weapon, too. On Earth we call it a--kiss." The night was warm and the moons that hurtled across the Neeoornian sky shed a pale lustre on the gardens where Adatha Za and Jonathan Morgan sat. Between her legs lay a box filled with strips of queerly colored metals, vials of shining dull and iridescent chemicals, containers and compartments of tubes and alloys. "It is from these that Morka Kar will fashion his weapons," she said, fingering the objects before her. "From the mints provided by the monomachy coffer, he will be enabled to throw weapon after weapon at you. For instance, this--from this he will make a molecular magnetizer that will cause the molecules that make up your body so to attract each other that your body will shrink in upon itself--assume the density of a dwarf star--fall through the earth to the center of this planet! Or with this he could form a ray that is hot as the hottest sun in the universe. He may not use that. It is a weapon that even Morka Kar fears. It is too deadly. Were it to escape his mental control, it could blow up the entire planet. Now from this tube--" Jonathan listened dutifully. He was in this away over his head, and no amount of last minute cramming would help. To assimilate this knowledge would require years. He wasn't quitting, but he realized that if he did win, it would be by some method purely Earthian, and not by a study of Zarathzan weaponry. He looked at Adatha Za. He put his hands on her soft shoulders and turned her toward him. Her eyes were questioning. "We have a weapon on Earth, too," he whispered. "It's a kiss. Do you Zarathzans have the kiss?" With arched brows the girl followed his thought, then shook her head a little disdainfully, saying, "No. That does not seem to be any sort of armament I know. Is it a good weapon?" "The best there is on a night like this--with a girl like you." * * * * * Her mouth was warm and soft and moist beneath his. His lips held hers for a long time before he let her go. She opened her long-lashed eyes slowly, staring at him. "That is no weapon," she accused softly. She put her arms up and drew his head down again, whispering, "--but I like it. I should really study it some more." This time it was the girl whose lips clung. Jonathan laughed, "For a Zarathzan you catch on pretty quickly." "I'm a scientist," she retorted. Nestled in his arms, with her hair flooding his chest and shoulder, Adatha Za said, "I wish--I wish that you and I could go back to Zarathza together, Jonathan Morgan. In my villa beside the Jaralayan Sea I would love to study this kiss-weapon of yours. It is such a nice weapon, even though it does frighten me a little." She gasped suddenly and tried to sit up, but Jonathan's long arms held her. "Now what's eating you?" he wanted to know. "That kiss--how many times have you experimented with that weapon on Earth?"