And then had come the creatures from the Land of Darkness to claim youth as a tribute from the helpless Earthians. Once every four years, they came to claim young men and women for some hideous experiment of theirs on the other side of the moon. And now Marene was just sixteen, and the creatures would be coming again in their black spaceship within two weeks! Guyard was thankful that death had spared Marene's mother from this greater horror. He held the girl tightly to him. She drew away finally and smiled up at him with the bravery of youth. "Father," she said, "whatever happens, I'm not afraid." Her voice was like calm music to his troubled brain. "Anyway, I have news for you!" "News?" "Yes. Captain Simms is going to try, maybe trying right this instant to get a radio message through to the Earth!" "Impossible!" Guyard shook his head quickly. "Zuldi and his guards keep the city under constant surveillance! Captain Simms should know better, than to try! Zuldi and his devils will detect the vibration instantly!" "But Captain Simms is trying a different type of sender," Marene explained. "He hopes that Zuldi's detectors will not...." She broke off suddenly. Guyard, too, heard the tumult somewhere out in the street, and the sound of croaking shouts. He hurried to the window and looked out. * * * * * There in the street almost below him stood Zuldi and six other of the hated creatures, their scaly, bloated bodies smeared with a green substance as protection against the rigors of light. Thick-lensed glasses shaded their eyes. Zuldi, croaking loudly to attract attention, was waving his arms and pointing downward at the broken body of Captain Simms that lay at his feet. Beside the dead man lay the tangled mass of what might once have been a radio, a radio that would never send its message to distant Earth. Zuldi stopped his shouting, and spat upon the man in the dust and sent a heavily-clawed foot raking over the already lacerated chest. He was using Captain Simms as an example to all other Earthians in the city. Guyard felt a hot bitterness rising uncontrollably within him. He flung the window open, jerked the gun from his belt and centered the sights upon the center of Zuldi's bone-crested forehead. "Damn him!" he breathed. "I'll...." It was Marene who knocked the gun down before he had a chance to fire. A great fear was in her eyes as she wrested the weapon from his fingers. "You can't do it, Father! You can't do it!" She thrust the gun into a pocket beneath her short coat. "Putting Zuldi out of the way would not help us," she reminded him. "The other Earthians had guns. They would discover that you had a gun and guess that others would only kill you. They would end our chances to fight the black ship when it comes."