Irak began to swear excitedly. "This gun--the thing won't work fast enough, Lolan! Can't stop them with these." "Then we'll use the new guns!" The idea took him so swiftly he fumbled through two seconds getting his little copper disintegrator into position. A long blue serpent of flame licked out at the Martians. Where it touched, men withered and went down without a sound. Arzt roared his anger. He flung his useless weapon with all his might at his former subordinate. "Damn your Venusian heart!" he screamed. "You can't stop us! Can't--" The words choked off. Irak had cut him down with a single shot. Silence dwelt in the tunnel, and through it came a hoarse cry: "Lolan! It's done! The last of it's gone. Were--were we in time?" Lolan sank back against the wall. He let his eyes fill with the ghastly remains of his former underlings. "Yes," he muttered to himself. "Yes! They're--finished!" * * * * * There was jubilation throughout all Areeba that day. The scene in the tunnel had been duplicated everywhere. Martians, one minute brutal and ruthless, became craven cowards the next. There was not a man of them alive by night. At sundown, Lolan stood with Mora, Atarkus, and the others high in command at the ruins of the palace. The sun had broken through the perpetual clouds to cast a golden fog over everything. The beauty of it seemed to hold them all. "It's symbolic," Lolan told the Emperor. "Symbolic of the grandeur to come for Venus. I see a future for you as the greatest emperor our world has ever known." Atarkus shook his head. "Not for me, my boy. For you! I am old, ready to leave the struggle to the young. Irak, who could be a more fitting ruler for Venus than the prince we lost and gained again?" Irak's ugly face grinned. "No one. But an Emperor must have an Empress! Could that not be arranged too?" Atarkus saw the flush on his daughter's face, the corresponding color in Prince Lolan's cheeks. "Arranged!" he grunted. "That's been done a long time. It was arranged the day Lolan came back from Mars!" End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Martian Terror, by Ed Earl Repp