Arzt swore at him and half-drew his pistol. Sneering, then, he relaxed and turned to fix Lolan with a burning glance. "Your failure tonight intrigues me," he offered suggestively. "You never seemed to be hindered by pain to that extent before." Lolan showed him his bleeding fingers, from which great drops of blood were falling. "It was the shock," he murmured. "You don't think I let him escape on purpose--!" "I hardly imagine you could be so foolish. At any rate, you'll be given a chance to redeem yourself. Sometime in the next three or four days I want those two killed, very quietly and--very thoroughly. The honor is to be yours." Lolan's shocked eyes flashed to a pair of burning, amused ones. Arzt's broad lips were smiling fixedly. The young officer tried to mask his horror. "Let someone else do it," he countered. "Killing women is out of my line." "Killing _that_ woman, you mean!" the Commander pounced on him. "I've known what was in your mind all these months. I hoped you'd see the foolishness of it. You're too good a man to lose inside the execution chamber. What's the matter with you, Lolan? Are you deceiving yourself that these damned Venusian dogs are good enough for a Martian officer?" Hatred swept Lolan suddenly like a flame. With difficulty he held his voice to a flat, deadly hiss. "Good enough! Too good, if you ask me! I'm sick of driving sick men into mines reeking of sulphur fumes, to dig iridite for us to decorate our uniforms with. Tired of seeing them live like animals, in filthy shacks ready to fall in on them or in tenements crawling with vermin. If cracking a bloody whip is what being a Martian officer means, I'm ashamed of being one. I'd change my Sub-Commander's rank here for that of a private back on Mars!" Arzt's face grew hot and red with a dark suffusion of blood. "The only transfer I'll give you is to Rock Island, on the Fluorine Sea," he grated. "Would that suit you better?" Lolan's spine crawled. Rock Island was a tiny hump of land in the middle of a sea perpetually blanketed in fogs--fogs laden with deadly fluorine. But someone had to keep the light on that island to guide incoming space-ships. The keepers usually lasted about six weeks. "In other words, I stay here or I die!" he stated flatly. "Exactly. So let's hear the last of this. If you complain again I'll take it as treason. Remember my orders: In four days I want to see their bodies in the dead-house. If I don't--it will be yours I'll see there!" * * * * * Lolan's first chance to examine the bracelet was in the solitude of his room an hour later. He drew all the shades, while a feeling of tension built stiflingly within him. Under the soft glow of a lamp he studied it.