The slain Martian's costly delay in killing the man with the rifle appeared to enrage his companions. With brutal callousness two of them moved forward, and hurled the lifeless body to the ground. Then, they took care not to repeat his mistake. They killed all three men, with such rapid bursts of weapon fire that they were lifted into the air, hurled backwards and were dead before their bodies struck the ground. The slender woman whom Tragor coveted cried out in anguish and ran toward the crumpled form of the man with the rifle, her eyes shining with a near madness that went far beyond shock and made her waver as she ran. He was still clasping the rifle, his fingers snagged in the trigger frame. There were no visible wounds on his body, but blood stained his left temple and his eyebrows and hair had been singed. His face was ashen, the eyes blankly staring. She knew at once that he was dead and flung herself upon him, weeping, moaning, her body racked by uncontrollable sobs. She did not hear the slow, heavy tread of a Martian drawing near and if she had heard she would not have cared. She had no desire to go on living, and had ceased to know the meaning of fear. Her life was over. At that moment she realized, as never before, that no one dies alone. He had taken her with him and she had died too. Only the hollow shell of a living woman remained. She did not care what happened to that shell. There is no fate worse than death to a woman who has ceased to live. At first, when she felt herself being seized and lifted up, she struggled only to remain where she was--close to the man whose life she had shared and would go on sharing forever, despite death and change and Time's relentless tyranny in a universe which spared no one. She was not even aware of the Martian's fleshly strength, the savage cruelty of his embrace, the way he was drawing her to him mercilessly, encircling her shoulders and refusing to relax his grip on her arms until his flat, hard chest bruised her numbed breasts. At first the Martian was no more than a hindrance, an obstacle, a disembodied force that was keeping her from her dead lover. It was as if a magnetic web had enmeshed her limbs and was lifting her from the slain man's side, forcing her to abandon him. It wasn't until the Martian had swung about and started back toward the ship, his arms tight about her, that she started to struggle. Even then her struggles were blindly instinctive, her flesh rebelling while her mind remained remote and grief-shattered. She was not the only captive. Both of the stout women were struggling furiously in the arms of warrior-caste Martians, their faces flushed and despairing, their bodies arched backwards, as if to remain pressed cruelly to the boardlike chests of captors so brutish and alien, their screams silenced by force, was a horror and a degradation which no woman could sanely endure.