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But when he broke the seal and unscrewed the little glass tube in the butt, he discovered that it was empty. The gray, synthetic radio-active material from which it drew its power had been removed. Murray grinned at this discovery, without mirth. It was conclusive. At the first opportunity he jostled one of the soldiers, knocking his neuro-pistol to the floor his own, too.
But Joro, the veteran of many a battle of wits and arms, parried the stroke with the thick barrel of his neuro-pistol, caught the girl's wrist and disarmed her. The screams of the maid went unheeded. From the other parts of the palace came sounds of struggle, the clashing of sword on sword. "Sira! Sira!" Joro panted, struggling to hold the girl. "You must give up your impractical ideas!
Nevertheless, so strong was Sime's intuition, he leveled his neuro-pistol at the cabinet and approached. With a sweep of his muscular arm he swung it open and gasped! The sight that greeted him was enough to make any man gasp, even one less young and impressionable than Sime. In all of his twenty-five years he had not seen a woman so lovely.
But he could not escape the conviction that it would be a splendid way to get rid of an undesirable passenger. Dropped through that trap-door a man's body would have an uninterrupted fall until it smashed on the rocks below. Murray then examined the neuro-pistol that had been given him. It looked all right.
The words floated out: " better go see how he's coming along." The horrified mate saw the wrecked boxes, the blood-covered giant with a thick steel bar in his teeth, the extra valves scattered about the floor. He whipped out his neuro-pistol, pointed it at Tolto. But Tolto made no move to resist when the shaken officer gingerly took the bar out of his mouth.
"So you're going to murder me," Murray said, speaking calmly. "I take no chances," was Balta's short answer. "Step!" Murray stepped, swaying like a man in deadly fear. He lowered his feet through the hole. Looking down, he saw that they were about to pass over a bitter salt lake, occasionally found in the Martian desert. He looked up into the muzzle of the menacing neuro-pistol.
Sime pressed a neuro-pistol into Tolto's hand, warned him to sweep the stairs with it, while he coursed around for some of the pellet bombs. He found them, and two of them closed that avenue of attack with a mass of jumbled ruins. Now they had a breathing spell. A combination of blind luck and foolhardiness had given them temporary possession of this desert outpost.
The ship was now well in the air, and beginning to move away from the fort. But they were only ten miles away, and Murray had hardly expected that Balta would be in such a hurry. "You get off here!" Balta said, and Murray felt the muzzle of the neuro-pistol on his spinal column. A grinning soldier seized a countersunk ring and raised the trap-door.
The cards flew up and showered all over the room. "He's loose!" this shipman croaked, diving under the table. "Mr. Yens! Mr. Yens!" shouted the captain, a small, bristling Martian with graying, stiff hair. He snatched the neuro-pistol at his side, pointed it at Tolto, pressed the trigger. Tolto felt a numbing cold as the ray struck him.
Now a hotel guard came along. He carried at his belt a neuro-pistol, a deadly weapon whose beam would destroy the nervous structure of any living creature. He went past the port with measured stride, and Sime slid back the safety plate with a puzzled frown. Why was he so nervous? This wasn't the first dangerous mission on which he had embarked in the course of his official duty.
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