THE BEAST-JEWEL OF MARS By LEIGH BRACKETT Burk Winters was a panting, shambling ape, fleeting through dark and echoing pits of horror. Behind him hissed the lashes of the jeering mob, savagely exultant at having debauched still another proud Terran into something that crawled. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Burk Winters remained in the passenger section while the _Starflight_ made her landing at Kahora Port. He did not think that he could bear to see another man, not even one he liked as much as he did Johnny Niles, handle the controls of the ship that had been his for so long. He did not wish even to say good bye to Johnny, but there was no avoiding it. The young officer was waiting for him as he came down the ramp, and the deep concern he felt was not hidden in the least by his casually hearty grin. Johnny held out his hand. "So long, Burk. You've earned this leave. Have fun with it." Burk Winters looked out over the vast tarmac that spread for miles across the ochre desert. An orderly, roaring confusion of trucks and flat-cars and men and ships--ore ships, freighters, tramps, sleek liners like the _Starflight_, bearing the colours of three planets and a dozen colonies, but still arrogantly and predominantly Terran. Johnny followed his gaze and said softly, "It always gives you a thrill, doesn't it?" Winters did not answer. Miles away, safe from the thundering rocket blasts, the glassite dome of Kahora, Trade City for Mars, rose jewel-like out of the red sand. The little sun stared wearily down and the ancient hills considered it, and the old, old wandering wind passed over it, and it seemed as though the planet bore Kahora and its space-port with patience, as though it were a small local infection that would soon be gone. He had forgotten Johnny Niles. He had forgotten everything but his own dark thoughts. The young officer studied him with covert pity, and he did not know it. Burk Winters was a big man, and a tough man, tempered by years of deep-space flying. The same glare of naked light that had burned his skin so dark had bleached his hair until it was almost white, and just in the last few months his grey eyes seemed to have caught and held a spark of that pitiless radiance. The easy good nature was gone out of them, and the lines that laughter had shaped around his mouth had deepened now into bitter scars.