In Helos they were beginning to fear that Taroh might have become a menace. Occasional visitors to banished relatives in the Malob colony brought darkling hints back to Helos that Taroh was promising to have his revenge; that some day there would be a war like the ancient wars; the exiles and the Malobs would be victorious and they would rule and enjoy the better lands and better climates which the Heanas now were ruling. It had frightened Lea's father and his counselors. Secretly they had selected a young Heana named Artone, who volunteered to pretend that he was convicted of a crime and banished; and thus go and as a spy join Taroh to find out what was going on. This was known to Lea. She liked Artone--he was young, handsome and courageous. She feared for him; his mission was dangerous. Then, during one of the times of sleep, Artone had returned to Helos, riding one of the swift iguaras. Lea had met him, before he met anyone else in Helos. And his news was terrifying. Even before Taroh had been banished--Artone had learned--he had been experimenting with a diabolical, dangerous drug. It was finished now. A drug which effected the growth of living cell-organisms. Young Artone had been clever. He had gained Taroh's confidence, so that one night the drunken Taroh and an evil woman who called herself Tara after him, gloatingly told Artone all about it. Lea had only partially understood the depth of scientific principles involved. To enlarge the bodily size of a living human, for instance, Taroh had said, engaged no deeper problem than does a slight expansion of tissue--or the rapid growth of a single cell--except that it must be carried farther. The problem was to find a combination of chemicals, sufficiently unharmful to life, that would so act upon the cells as to cause an increase of their bulk without changing their shape--a uniform proportionate rate of growth of each cell, so that the body shape would not be altered. Taroh, experimenting with simple living organisms, had progressed to insects, and then to himself. He had found, too, that any object of animal or vegetable cell structure which is held in close physical contact with the enlarging body, likewise would be expanded, because they would be within the natural aura of magnetic field with which every living thing is surrounded. Thus a man's garments, his weapons closely held against him--unless they were mineral--would grow large with him. "And Taroh planned to take this drug?" George Carter exclaimed. "And grow large? A man a hundred feet tall perhaps--so that he could come and devastate your city of Helos? Why of course he could do that!" It had been Taroh's boasted intention. But Lea, hearing of it from the breathless Artone, had ridden back at once with Artone on the huge iguara. It had pleased and flattered the drunken Taroh that the girl, out of attraction for him, had come to join him, so that Lea had been able to learn from him where he kept the diabolic drug.