dejectedly
upon the hard stone floor. Her fingers were gentle, comforting,
despite the utter hopelessness and discouragement that lay heavily
upon him.

They sat thus, nor counted the flying minutes, while the fog of
despair in the mind of the beaten man was clearing. He raised his head
finally to meet the look in the dark eyes. And he managed a smile, as
one can who has thought his way through to the bitter end and has
faced it. He patted the hand that had stroked his bowed head.

"It's all right," he said gently. "What is to be, will be--and we
can't change it. And it's all right somehow."

His sleeping, during their long stay, had been a cause for amusement
to Marahna, whose habits were tuned to the long days and nights on the
moon. And he was sleepy now, sleepy and tired. She spread the robe
over him as he rested on the soft fiber bed.

He awoke from a deep sleep with a light heart. For Jerry Foster, as he
faced his own certain death, had seen certain things. It was the
end--that was one fact he couldn't evade. But he grinned cheerfully,
all by himself in that strange cheerless room, as he thought of what
else he had visioned.

"And it will be just one hell of a fight," he said softly aloud.
"There will be some of those priests that will know they have been in
a war."

* * * * *

He examined again the knife and the automatic, and counted the
cartridges left in the magazine. There were more he had found in a
pocket of his coat, enough to replace those he had fired. He slipped
the pistol into its holster at the sound of soft footsteps
approaching.

It was Marahna who entered, a strange and barbaric Marahna. She was
clad in a garment of spun gold that enveloped her tall figure. It
trailed in rippling beauty on the floor--draped in resplendence her
slim body, to end in soft folds about a head-dress that left Jerry
breathless.

Her face was entirely concealed. The gold helmet covered her head. It
was tall, made entirely of hammered gold in which spirals of jewels
reflected their colors of glittering light. She was quite
unrecognizable in the weird magnificence.

Only her voice identified the figure. She murmured chokingly some soft
words, then raised her head with its barbaric helmet proudly high as
she concluded. There were words become familiar now to Jerry. Together
with the spectacle she presented, her meaning was more than plain.

"The time has come," she was telling h