guard," he said softly, as if speaking to himself. He
walked on.

Another heap of flesh was pitched before the front wall of the
ranch-house. The man it had been a little while before had evidently
been running for the door when the deadly rays had got him. His
ray-gun was lying a few feet away. Again Carse stooped and again very
gently pulled the ragged thing over.

"By God!" stammered Harkness suddenly, staring, his face white,
"that--that's Jack O'Fallon--old Jack O'Fallon! Why, we went to
navigation school together! We--"

"Yes," said the Hawk, "O'Fallon, overseer." He stepped into the house.
Friday, impassive and grim, pulled Harkness away from the distorted
body.

* * * * *

Three more were tumbled together behind a splintered table in the main
room. The rays had done their work well. Three were welded, it seemed,
into one.... It was some time before the Hawk's frigid whisper came.

"Martin ... Olafson ... and this--Antil ... Antil was the only
Venusian I ever liked...."

The chairs and tables in the room were overturned, most of them bore
the seared scars of ray-guns, which showed plainly enough that there
had been a desperate last minute hand-to-hand struggle there, after
the defensive ray-web had failed and the pirates rushed the building.
The radio alcove was choked with seared, cracked wreckage. Crane, the
operator, still sat in his seat, but he was slumped over forward, and
his head and chest were pitted with slanting ray holes. One hand had
been reaching for a dial. The other was twisted and charred.

"And Crane, the last," said Hawk Carse, and for some moments he stood
there, his face cold and unmoving save for the tiny twitching of the
left eyelid. Utter silence rested over the bitter three--a silence
broken only by the occasional roar of an angry phanti bull outside in
the enclosure.

Finally Carse took a deep breath and turned to Friday.

"You'll see to their burying," he ordered quietly. "Get the power ray
from the ship and burn out two big pits on that knoll off the corner
of the corral."

Friday looked at him in puzzlement. "Two, suh?" he repeated. "Why two?
Why not put 'em all in one?"

"You will put all my men in one. I'll need the other later.... You,"
he went on, to Harkness, "get the cargo of horns aboard. We can't
leave it out there, for three of those pirates fled into the jungle. I
haven't time to find them, and they'd come out and bury the horn