"One more thing!" she cried. "I must master them myself. I must show
them I--I, Liane--am ruler here. You promise? You promise me you will
not interfere; that you will do nothing?"

"But--"

Liane interrupted me before I could put my objections into words.

"Promise!" she commanded. "There are hundreds, thousands of them! You
cannot slay them all--and if you did, there would be more. I can bend
them to my will; they know my power. Promise, or there will be many
deaths upon your hands!"

"I promise," I said.

"And you--all of you?" she demanded, sweeping Correy and Kincaide with
her eyes.

"Commander Hanson speaks for us all," nodded Kincaide.

With a last glance at Hendricks, whose eyes had never left her for an
instant, she was gone.

Hendricks uttered a long, quivering sigh. His face, as he turned to
us, was ghastly white.

"She's gone," he muttered. "Forever."

"That's exceedingly unfortunate, sir, for you," I replied crisply. "As
soon as it's perfectly safe, we'll see to it that you depart also."

The sting of my words apparently did not touch him.

"You don't understand," he said dully. "I know what you think, and I
do not blame you. She came back; you know that.

"'You are coming with me,' she said. 'I care for you. I want you. You
are coming with me, at once.' I told her I was not; that I loved her,
but that I could not, would not, go.

"She opened a port and showed me one of her countrymen, standing not
far away, watching the ship. He held something in his hand.

"'He has one of your hand bombs,' she told me. 'I found it while I
was hidden and took it with me when I left. If you do not come with
me, he will throw it against the ship, destroy it, and those within
it.'

"There was nothing else for me to do. She permitted me to explain no
more than I did in the note I left. I pleaded with her; did all I
could. Finally I persuaded her to give you the word she did, there
before the great flame.

"She brought me back here at the risk of her own life, and, what is
even more precious to her, her power. In--in her own way, she loves
me...."

* * * * *

It was an amazing story; a second or two passed before any of us could
speak. And then words came, fast and joyous; our friend, our trusted
fellow-officer had come back to us! I felt as though a great black
cloud had slid from across the sun.

And then, above our voices, rose a great mutter of sound. We glanced