ak at first, but growing in
intensity as she pressed some sort of trigger. The man shrieked in agony as
the light played on him. Then the smell of burning flesh came to Ben's
nostrils, and the shriek became a single high pitched scream which choked
off suddenly.

Ben's escort laughed with ghoulish enjoyment, said something to the woman
in the doorway, and gestured at the charred body on the ground. The violet
light grew to blinding intensity. A puff of smoke and the body was gone.

"What was that for?" Ben gasped.

His escort smiled indulgently and shot a question at the other woman. The
reply was a shrug of shoulders and a few short syllables.

"He did something that displeased her," she told Ben. At his look of horror
she laughed again, apparently pleased to have shocked him.

He noticed, as they went along, that the space ships decreased in size.
Those in the first rows had been comparable to Earth's battle cruisers,
those in the last were one or two man jobs. His own ship, the _Rapier_, was
at the very end of the last line.

Beyond was a vast army of men, both rosy skinned and hairy, at work on a
gigantic excavation project. Great power shovels scooped load after load of
earth. But most of the work was being done by the men who labored with
primitive pick and shovel.

Above the sound of digging rose the sharp voices of the giant women of
Teris, each with a battalion under her command. As far as Ben's eyes could
reach men were digging at the ground.

He was hustling along to a point where a dirt spattered group struggled
with a metallic lining for the half-mile hole it had excavated. At that
point his escort turned him over to the woman who bossed that crew. Ben saw
in the hand of the overseer one of the violet ray cylinders.

"Down there," she said curtly, pointing to where a small knot of men worked
on a terrace fifty feet below. "They will tell you what to do."

Ben had found nothing strange in the fact that his escort had spoken
English fluently. She had been present at his electroanalysis. But he
doubted that all the women of Teris could have the same command of the
language. Nevertheless he said nothing and clambered down the ladder to the
terrace beneath. Ben's unasked question was answered when he saw the five
faces turned up toward him.

* * * * *

Earth men! Even the grime that covered them could not hide that. And there
was added proof in their widening eyes. The