His voice sank even lower as he stopped in the corridor and gripped me. "Listen, I've seen your girl Dora--Setta's been taking care of her. I hope the Supreme One decides to marry you to her. But I wouldn't count on it. I've seen Torkine and Bragg both lookin' at her pretty queer. She's a damn sweet-lookin' girl." My heart was pounding. "Johnny, look here; you say you want to escape, get back to Earth?" "That's what I was tellin' you. Or to Mars--that would be all right. Setta and I are planning it. Can't tell you now. She loves Bragg, and wants to get him out of here. Bragg has been punished by the monster." "Johnny, listen. When we get to the planetoid, I want to be in with you--Dora and I." "Yes. That's what I guessed. Suits me fine. But I'm tellin' you--don't you trust a damn soul!" * * * * * The weird passions of humans. Here on this little space-vehicle we all were captives of the Supreme One. And yet, wherever there are humans, smoldering strife will exist. The criminal Torkine and his fifty men--what murderous action were they planning? We passed one of them in the corridor; a big, beetle-browed fellow in trousers and shirt. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring after us with a grinning leer. But he moved quickly enough when a little Physical came marching up with its hurried, jerky little steps and ordered him away. At the entrance to the small control tower which projected up like the hub of a wheel from the center of the disc-vehicle, Bragg was standing. "So they got you and your girl?" he murmured. "Yes," I agreed. I stared at the woman who was beside him. Setta, his wife, the girl from Mars. She was a small, brown-skinned girl of perhaps twenty. An odd face with slanted eyes, narrow nose and queerly pointed chin. Long sleek black hair framed her face, fell over her brown, sleek bare shoulders and crossed her full breasts to make a sort of bodice. From her waist a fringed brown skirt hung to her bare ankles. Strange-looking young woman of another world from mine. But as she smiled at me, revealing even white teeth, I felt her charm, and almost at once my sense of her strangeness was gone. At least we were both humans, a man and a woman, with so vast a gulf between us and the gruesome little Physicals. "I have tried to be good to your woman Dora," Setta said as I passed her. "Yes, thank you," I responded. The Control Turret was pallid with overhead starlight. Its big circular glassite windows showed me the spread of the planetoid's barren surface underneath us. We had dropped down through cloud layers now. The wild naked wastes of the little world's surface were no more than ten thousand feet down. Still there seemed nothing but barren metal rocks; no sign of life human or otherwise. "So you did not die, Tom Ralston. Welcome to our little colony!"