She did not answer, less for the contemptuous accusation in his voice than the more dreadful thought her trained mind thrust at her as insistently. If the _Plutonian_ had been sabotaged and wrecked for such world-loot, as his sure knowledge, his very presence indicated, then his first assumption must inevitably be true. The survivor he considered her must indeed be the hellish wrecker. And she was not the only survivor. Her eyes were enormous. A mound of living fire grew upon the dusty steel as he piled up the blazing rings and brooches of the long-dead Orion kings. He tossed down a circlet of hammered gold, wreathed for the brows of some ancient queen, and the thirty pendant gems tinkled musically in the silence. Each could have bought the souls of an army, round, glinting stars of purest emerald green deep-sunk with tiny suns of icy diamond lustre. Kurland paused in his magical task, looking across at her. "Are they worth the blood we walked upon to reach them, Recorder?" he asked, quietly. "I ... I didn't know," she faltered, meeting his gaze with growing firmness. "Men have died before over these bright toys," he shrugged, opening another box and pouring it in a blazing cascade over the first heap of white fire. "Men will die again. And among them, Gion." "The Marward of Jupiter?" she whispered. "He knows? He sent you here, knowing this?" "Your message reached him. The Marward is swift to serve his servants. Particularly those ... bearing gifts." "You betray yourself," she flashed, pointing at the gems. "Gion is evil, but would he trust any messenger with _those_?" Kurland looked quietly at her. "The Marward holds me in tighter bonds than you think, Recorder. If I fail him, five of my friends hang. Skyhigh." She looked searchingly at him. "Who are you? You rate your friends very high, Black-beard." * * * * * Kurland smiled, a hard grin with no mirth in it. "I am Eldon Kurland, as I told you. Outlaw. Gion made. Were you a true Recorder, you should know of me, and know I hold my men dearer than this trumpery glass from beyond the Milky Way." His gloved hand struck the gems contemptuously, tossing jewels to right and left upon the papered flooring. She followed their meteoric flight, then glanced up in astonishment as Kurland swayed, knees buckling, and sank with a clash of heavy armor to sprawl across the fortune he had struck aside. Behind him a bright, feral countenance smiled wolfishly and the slight figure which had slipped silently into the room from the passage straightened up triumphantly, gun in hand. Allen Heywood smiled upon her benignly. [Illustration: _The outlaw stiffened, then his knees buckled._] III Kurland opened his eyes dizzily, then shut them again. The thick voice of Gion purred through the spinning darkness. "You might as well, Kurland. It's real."