While Jarl watched, the monster in the ebon mask stepped back and passed the torch to the altar-crewman who had brought it. Other primitives unclamped the gyves and dragged the corpse away. Again Black-Mask brought up his hands. Again the crowd's tumultuous hubbub faded. Black-Mask's hands came down. He swung about till he faced Jarl. Imperiously, he gestured. Jarl's captors dragged him forward. The torch-bearer stepped quickly back, out of their path. Fear was in Jarl Corvett, then--a fear that verged on shrieking terror. His body seemed like a thing apart--a statue carved from living ice, with no relation to his being. But hate came with the terror, a flaming hate that grew at every step, till its white-hot fire ate up the fear and burned away his sickness and his trembling. Of a sudden he was himself again. He sucked in air. Without volition, his muscles stiffened against the digging fingers of his savage escort. They jerked him up short before the altar. The black-masked figure shook a jet-gloved fist and shouted guttural imprecations. * * * * * The last shreds of Jarl's terror vanished, washed away in the flood of his tormentor's fury. Out of nowhere, a thing that Wassreck once had said came flashing to him: _Hate is the face of fear, not courage._ That hate which showed in the primitive's every line and gesture--it, too, was born of terror ... a welling fear of all and any beings who came down from the skies to Womar. Jarl laughed aloud, it was so funny--that he and this other should face each other so, in deadly menace, when within they were only quivering twins of terror. And as he laughed, his own hate died the same swift death to which his fear had fallen. A grim, bleak poise replaced them both. For if the primitives, in their hearts, felt the self-same fear that he had, there was still a chance for recklessness to blaze a path through this wilderness of desperation. His laugh cut short the black-masked figure's shouting. The primitive stared at him, as if unbelieving. Cold-eyed, cold-nerved, Jarl drew himself to his full height. Rigid, he probed for some--for any--last wild gambit. But Black-Mask, too, was straightening. He cried out fiercely to his helpers. They shoved Jarl forward. As they did so, the primitive beside the huge, wheeled tank lifted up the lid. Jarl glanced down into it. The vat was full. The awful broth almost lapped the brim. From it, in sickening waves, rose the sweetish, cloying fumes Jarl had come to associate with the primitives. Black-Mask leaned forward. Shouting again, he lashed out. His jet-gloved fist raked at Jarl's face. Instinctively, Jarl rocked back. New tides of black despair washed through him. What could he do, locked in his captor's grasp, hemmed between tank and torch-bearer, black-masked fiend and blood-drenched altar? Tank--and torch-bearer--!