Startled, unbelieving men collected in the corridor, as he freed them. Men with great welts from many beatings on their backs, and dull gleams of confusion in their eyes. Larsen, Schneider, Novak, Lloyde, and a host of others. Bart Mallory, the inventor and patent-holder of the sun-ray towers, was there, too, his once neat beard, which had been clipped in a Van Dyke fashion, an unkempt tangle, now. "What's happened, Leiccsen?" he croaked. "We're free! I don't understand! How can all the Callistans be suddenly ill like this--dying?" "I don't know," Ron stammered. "We'll have to try to find out." Like a bewildered pack the liberated slaves rushed to the factory exit. There, on the metal steps, a half dozen Acharian guards lay helpless. One already had ceased to sneeze and strangle. The dark red froth on his lips had ceased to drip to his bosom, smearing his fur. He was already dead. Before the factory exit, the released prisoners halted, staring across the plain, brilliant in the glow of the sun-towers. Leiccsenland still looked beautiful, though weird with the addition of strange, gleaming Acharian buildings, and with a puzzling greenness that had sprouted from the charred ground, masking the effects of Callistan vandalism, not so long ago. The conqueror-fleet of silvery ships stood in serried rows of silent power at the edge of a fire-blackened woods, that was beginning to show new leaves, once more. But not one of the invaders, among the hundreds that could be seen, stood on his feet. All writhed on the ground, in the streets, on the lawns, and beside the ships, helpless. The stamp of doom was upon them--sudden, subtle, nameless destruction! Then one of the Earthmen sneezed. Smith, it was. He was a big, husky fellow; but now his red cheeks blanched with fear. His unpleasant thought was easy to understand. That sneeze looked like a symptom. Were the Earthians, the colonists, to be wiped out by this hellish plague, too? Ron looked at Bart Mallory, and Bart Mallory stared back in concerned doubt. A group of other slaves who had been clearing the unkempt fields, were coming forward, shouting questions. Ron saw Anna Charles among them, haggard and tattered, but still alive, still herself. Impulsively he ran swiftly toward her. "Anna--honey!" he blurted, as he gathered her briefly into his arms. "You didn't try to break away to the hills. They didn't kill you! But now--I don't know what to think. This is Arne Reynaud's scheme come to fruition, isn't it? But maybe it'll get us, too--this pestilence."