MacVickers dropped into a circular room thirty feet across, floored and walled with metal and badly lighted. The roof was of thick glassite plates. Through them, very clearly, MacVickers could see four Europan guards, watching. "They're always there," said the Venusian softly. "You'll come to love them, stranger." There were men standing around the ladder foot, thirteen of them, with the Venusian. Earthmen, Martians, Venusians, pale, stark naked, smeared with a blue-green stain. Their muscles stood out sharp on their gaunt bodies, their silver collars a mocking note of richness. Deep, deep, inside himself, MacVickers shivered. His nostrils wrinkled. There was fear in the room. The smell of it, the shudder of it in the air. Fear that was familiar and accustomed, lying in uneasy sleep, but ready to awake. There were other men, four or five of them, back in the shadows by the wall bunks. They didn't speak, nor come out. He took a deep breath and said steadily, "I'm Chris MacVickers. Deep-space trader out of Terra. They caught me trying to get through the Asteroid lines." Their eyes glistened at him, looking from him to something behind them that he couldn't see. They were waiting, and there was something ghoulish in it. The Venusian said sharply, "Tough luck, MacVickers. I'm Loris, late of the Venusian Guard. Introduce yourselves, boys." They did, in jerky detached voices, their eyes sliding from him to the hidden something. Loris drew a little closer, and one of the Earthmen in the group came toward him. "I'm Pendleton," he said. "The _Starfish_. Remember?" MacVickers stared at him. The furrows deepened in his craggy face. He said, "My God!" very softly, and not as a curse. "Pendleton!" The man grinned wryly. He was English, the ravaged ghost of the big, ruddy, jovial spaceman MacVickers remembered. "Quite a change, eh? Well, perhaps we're lucky, MacVickers. We shan't have to see the smash." MacVickers' head dropped forward. "Then you saw it coming, too?" Loris made a little bitter laugh that was almost a sob. All the desperate boyish humor was gone from his face, leaving it old and grim. "Who hasn't? I've been here--God knows. An eternity. But even before my ship was taken, we knew it. We can't build spaceships as fast as their Jovium destroys them. When they break through the Asteroid line...." Pendleton's quiet voice was grave. "Mars is old and tired and torn with famine. Venus is young, but her courage is undisciplined. Her barbarians aren't suited to mechanized warfare. And Earth...." He sighed. "Perhaps if we hadn't fought so much among ourselves...." MacVickers said harshly, "It wouldn't make much difference. When a man has a weapon that causes metal to explode its own atoms, it doesn't make any difference what you stack up against him." He shook his craggy head impatiently. "What is this place? What are you doing here? The Jovies just brought me here and dumped me in without a word of explanation."