"The Voornizar must have contacted him long ago, and made some kind of deal--probably offered him all the radium he could use," mused Art. "I would guess that he planned to establish a new laboratory on Venus--that's why he was so interested in that city you found, Denny--interested enough to discredit your story on Earth, and order you held by the Voornizar!" "And to go a step farther," interjected Klalmar-lan, "I will wager that we find the Voornizar's base not so far from that city." "What ghastly treachery!" gasped Elene. "To betray his own Mother Earth to annihilation. Already millions have died--" Art, watching her, saw her freeze in silence. He tried to glance at the others, but his eyeballs would not move in their sockets. He tried to move; his whole body was gripped in a rigid paralysis! There was utter silence and stillness in the hurtling ship. Art's thoughts were racing. What fools they had been, flocking around Denny's bunk when he came to. They had totally neglected to watch the control panel, where the mass detector would have warned them of an approaching ship. Now they had been surprised and seized with the same deadly paralysis that had trapped Denny before. The air lock swung inward. None of the four were surprised to see Dr. Theller step through the port, keeping a careful distance between himself and the two grotesque monstrosities who followed him. Theller was without space suit or arms. Art stared with horrified fascination at the two Voornizar. The dazzling, white hot radiance that ceaselessly flowed from them made it difficult to identify their form. They seemed to have none; yet they could take any shape. Fundamentally, they were a tube about a foot in diameter and some seven feet high. They had a slit-like mouth near the top, and a huge crystalline eye which surmounted their exact top. They seemed to favor a bilateral form, although the number of pairs of arms appeared indeterminate. But as Art watched, above each slit mouth appeared a huge beak nose and above this, deep, staring sightless hollows. A horrible caricature of a human face! Demoniac laughter came from the lipless mouth of one! * * * * * "So you pitiful Martians had a weapon that would stop the Voornizar!" it boomed. "You fool, did you not know that we are immortal? Only when we lack radium can one of us die--and then, he only suspends animation until sustenance can be brought. I know not the principle of the thing you fashioned, although its effect is to halt radio-activity. Think ye that would kill us?" The thing's laughter roared. "We merely lay inert--waiting only for the next contact with a living Voornizar or any bit of active radium, to set our life process in motion once more. Think ye that you can fight a million mighty ships with such a harmless weapon?